(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 Good All right good morning welcome to Sherr Foundation Baptist Church and if you could find your seats and a hymnal the green hymnal or the red hymnal first hymn is 162 to God be the glory. To God be the glory of the first. 🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵 All together To God be the glory The great things he hath done So loved he the world He gave us his soul Who yield in his life An appointment for sin And open the life Made the home in the wind Praise the Lord, praise the Lord Let the earth hear his voice Praise the Lord, praise the Lord Let the people rejoice O come to the Father through Jesus O Son and give him the glory Great things he hath done O perfect redemption The purchase of God To where we believe her The promise of God The vilest offender Who truly believes That moment from Jesus All God in receives Praise the Lord, praise the Lord Let the earth hear his voice Praise the Lord, praise the Lord Let the people rejoice O come to the Father through Jesus O Son and give him the glory Great things he hath done Great things he hath taught us Great things he hath done And great are rejoicing Through Jesus the Son On poorer and higher And greater will be For wonder or transport When Jesus we see Praise the Lord, praise the Lord Let the earth hear his voice Praise the Lord, praise the Lord Let the people rejoice O come to the Father through Jesus O Son and give him the glory Great things he hath done Amen. Brother Brennan, can you give us the word of prayer? Amen. Next hymn is 183, O How I Love Jesus, 183. O How I Love Jesus, 183. O How I Love Jesus, 183. O How I Love Jesus, 183. O How I Love Jesus, 133. O How I Love Jesus, 133. O How I Love Jesus, 133. O How I Love Jesus, 133. O How I Love Jesus, 133. O How I Love Jesus, 133. It tells a phone whose loving heart Can fill my deepest hole O when its sorrow wears apart That none can bear below O How I Love Jesus, O How I Love Jesus, O How I Love Jesus, Because they first loved me This time we'll have the announcements. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Shore Foundation Baptist Church. Let's take our handles. Good night. Our bulletins will go through some announcements. If you need a bulletin, just lift up your hand. One of the ushers will bring you a bulletin. If you walked in late and didn't get one. All right, everybody got one? All right. On our front cover, we have our verse of the week. It says, Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. 1 Peter, chapter 5, verse 6. Very important to be humble, of course. And on our inside page there, we have our service times. Sunday morning, 10 30 a.m. Sunday evening, 3 30 p.m. Thursday Bible study says 6 30 p.m. Tonight we're going to be in Joshua, chapter number 11. And Thursday Bible study will be in 1 Chronicles, chapter number 21. Our soul winning times are listed below. And we do have soul winning today at 1 p.m. You'll meet in here at 1 p.m. if you're planning on going soul winning in between services. And 1 30 on location. If you're in the WhatsApp group and you're just eating lunch or something off location, you can just meet there on the locations. But you probably need to get with Alex to know which group number you're in. So there's different group numbers. So get with Alex. He's back there if you're planning on going soul winning. So our praise report, you can see the salvation and baptisms. And brother Justin, our new evangelist in Indiana, he had another baptism this morning. So there's two baptisms so far this year for our churches. And then the attendance from last week and the upcoming events, it's increased. I was looking through my calendar and trying to put some dates in there just so it got filled back up again there. And this coming weekend we have our Sweetheart Banquet for Married Couples. And Pastor Jim Weeb is going to be preaching at it. And the time it starts is at 4 p.m. for pictures. So the schedule is inside the WhatsApp group. So if you are married and you're planning on coming to the Sweetheart Banquet, the schedule is inside the WhatsApp group. And please, if you haven't signed up, we do need to plan for the food. We are not catering it this year. It's going to be done in-house. So we figured we're going to get more bang for our buck this year by doing it in-house because we're getting all kinds of savory meats. So tri-tip and all kinds of other good stuff. So we're having people make different types of foods and stuff. So anyway, we do need to know how many people are coming so I know how many pounds of meat to buy to bring. So I'm bringing all the stuff for people to prepare. If you need ingredients or me to pick stuff up for stuff that you're planning on making, then just let me know because Thursday I'm bringing it to the church. And so I'll be leaving it in the refrigerator. So that is the plan for that. And of course, you're allowed to dress up in the Western style. And you all know about that. So cowboy hats or whatever, however you want to dress up in the Western theme is fine as long as it's decent, all right? I think that goes without saying. But anyway, yeah, please sign up if you haven't already done that. And the sign-up sheet is in the WhatsApp group in our soul winning group. So February 16th, which is the next day, Pastor Wiebe will be preaching also for us again. And he is a pastor that I ordained in June. And he's doing a great job up there in the Manitoba area. They've moved into their building. They're renovating it now in Winnipeg. So it's going well. And he is going to be with us. I'm very excited to have him and his wife here with us this next coming weekend. So he'll be preaching the PM service. The kids Valentine's Day party is going to be here at the church building at 11.15. I think that's the right time, isn't it? Or is it 11.30? Did it get changed to 11.30? It's 11.15, okay, so that is right. All right, so that will be here at the church building, 11.15. And yeah, is there a sign-up for that or does it just show up? Just show up, yeah. Okay, and February 22nd is the Super Soul Winning Saturday for the month of February. It will be just a three-hour time. And we'll be meeting in Hazel Dell. Brother Alex is going to have some maps for us. And we've got a big group of apartments that we're going to be doing there. So I haven't decided where we're going to go for the meal afterwards. But there's lots of places to go in Hazel Dell. So maybe we'll even be able to sneak some Menchie's in afterwards or something. So we'll see. But let's see, March 14th through 16th is the Spokane six-year anniversary. And so that is going to be, hopefully there will be some good weather for that. I tried to push it up a week and tried to miss all the basketball stuff that's going on there. So hopefully I succeeded in that. I was trying to look for anything going on there that would make hotel rooms extremely expensive. Because it seems like that always happens to me. Or Blizzard hits or something like that. So hopefully that doesn't happen. So if you want to go up there and celebrate that. I'll be preaching up there on Friday night. And then Remy's going to be preaching both services on Sunday there. So we're going to be doing the Soul Winning on Saturday. So the last time we planned it on a weekend that far out, we had a big group of people saved. I think we had like 26 salvations or something. We had like 20, over 20 saved on the Saturday. So I'm hoping to recreate that somehow on that weekend. So that would be great if you could make it up there. And it's really beautiful up there if you've just never been up to that area. And maybe you just want to check out Coeur d'Alene. It's not too far away from there. You know, you go across to Idaho, it's like another country. So it's not quite as liberal, not even close. So it's like you cross into the promised land once you get over into Idaho or something. So it's pretty nice. So it's really close to the border there. But on March 29th, we'll have a Soul Winning marathon and a men's preaching night the next night on that Sunday night. And that's kind of our quarterly Soul Winning marathon. I haven't decided where we're going to go yet. But that's the quarterly men's preaching night on that Sunday night. The Lord's Supper, April 13th. And we're going to have an all SFBC mega marathon on April 19th, which is the day before Easter. So Pastor Stuckey talked me into starting to do it again the day before Easter, which I know in my mind feels like a bad idea. But we want to start that tradition back up again. So we'll be joining with other churches doing that, but I want all of our churches to participate in it. So we're going to try to start that tradition again. And we've got Easter Sunday and then we have the King James Conference off in the distance there. But it's not too far away. So we're a family integrated church. That means the children and infants are not separated from their parents for any reason. Please use those mother baby rooms and the mother baby room and the dad baby room for your convenience. All the other rules are listed below there. And the ways you can give besides in person down at the bottom of the page. What's come in so far for the month of February is at the bottom there. And the birthdays and anniversaries. We have Kathleen's birthday today. Where is she? Hi, Kathleen. How are you? How old are you today? Or I mean, how old are you going to be Saturday? Sixteen. Sixteen. Sweet sixteen. Okay. Well, she's grown up, Dad. Real quick. Pretty soon you're going to be walking her down the aisle. And you're going to be crying like I was. Not that soon, though. You've still got a few years, hopefully. But anyway. Well, sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you, Kathleen. Let's sing Happy Birthday to Kathleen. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, God bless you. Happy birthday to you. All right. That's all I have for announcements. So let's go ahead and sing another song. And then we'll receive the offering. I feel that on the going to other states for mission trips. Even if you go soloing like eight hours a day, it's a vacation from the liberalism. All right. Next time is 3-27. Higher ground. 3-27. I'm pressing on the upward way. Through heights I'm gaining every day. So praying as I'm onward bound. Lord, glad my feet on higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. My faith on heaven's table and The higher plea than I have found. Lord, glad my feet on higher ground. My heart has no desire to stay. Where doubts arise and fears dismay. Though some may dwell where these all bound. My prayer, my aim is higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. My faith on heaven's table and The higher plea than I have found. Lord, glad my feet on higher ground. I want to live above the world. Though Satan's darts at me are curled. For faith has caught the joyful sound. The song of saints on higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. My faith on heaven's table and The higher plea than I have found. Lord, glad my feet on higher ground. I want to scale the upmost high. And catch a gleam of glory bright. But still I'll pray till him I've found. Lord, lead me on to higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. My faith on heaven's table and The higher plea than I have found. Lord, glad my feet on higher ground. And at this time we'll collect the offering. And Brother Ramone, can you bless the offering? And may God thank you for the change you made in your house. That you may be blessed by the Savior of the church. Bless the soul and the preaching and the singing of the Lord. And also bless this offering in Jesus' name, amen. . . . . . . . . . . . . All right, go ahead and open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 17. Matthew chapter number 17, if you don't have a Bible, there should be one underneath the seat in front of you. Matthew chapter 17. . Matthew 17, the Bible reads, and after six days, Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias, talking with them. Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only. And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the son of man be risen again from the dead. Then his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you that Elias has come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic, and sore vexed, for oftentimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief, for verily I say unto you, If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out, but by prayer and fasting. And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry. And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take customer tribute? Of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto them, Of strangers? Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up, and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money. That take, and give unto them for me and thee. Brother Jesse, will you pray for us? Amen. The title of the sermon this morning is, The Children, Then the Children are Free, Then the Children are Free. It's a little bit of a controversial topic this morning. And a lot of you probably, if you pay attention to the news at all, have seen the corruption being uncovered by, I guess it's called the doge, where they're going around and trying to uncover all the corruption within the spending of our government, and they're just uncovering all the things that our tax dollars have been going to. And it's really quite disgusting, and they haven't even began to pull the lid off of everything that our government's been spending money on. And it kind of made me start thinking about taxes and the concepts of taxes in the Bible. And let's look down at our Bible here at verse number 24. The Bible says, When they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom, art, or tribute? Of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast and hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up. And when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money that take and give unto them for me and thee. So, you have here an interesting story here. So, they're in Capernaum, which is on the Sea of Galilee. And Jesus resorted to this place a lot. He came and preached out of here many times. He actually cursed this place because of their unbelief later on. But, when it says that they received tribute money, those that received tribute money, these are the collectors of the tribute money, they asked Peter, Doth not your master pay tribute? Now, what is that talking about? Well, this term in the King James Bible is brought up other times where they're trying to trap Jesus, and we'll go to those passages later, but they're trying to trap Jesus to see whether he thinks it's lawful to pay Caesar tribute money. Now, we'll get into the controversy about this in a minute, but it says Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? So, he's asking him, like, what do you actually think about this? Because Simon is speaking for Jesus and saying, yes, he does pay tribute money. But did Jesus say that? Or is Simon just speaking for his behalf? And then he asked him this question of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? Who do the kings take custom from? Tribute. What is this talking about? This is talking about taxes. Who do they take the money from? If you remember, Jesus, when his mother was pregnant with him, they were going, and she was pregnant with child, great with child, and they couldn't find a place to stay at. There was no room at the inn for them, right? And so they had to stay, and Jesus was born in a manger because of this. But why were they there? To pay taxes, because there was a decree by Augustus to pay their tribute, to pay their taxes. Because Israel was not a sovereign nation at this time anymore. Rome ruled over them, just like the Greeks ruled over them, just like the Medes and the Persians ruled over them, just like Babylon ruled over them. Because they were not a sovereign nation, after they were taken over by Babylon, they ceased to be a sovereign nation at that point. So they were under the rule of Gentiles from that point on. So they were under the tribute. They had to pay money to those kings. They didn't have a choice in the matter anymore. Before they were a sovereign nation, and they did their own thing. And I don't see anything in the Bible that talks about them paying taxes besides having to pay that half shekel when they counted the people for the standing armies. And that didn't happen very often. You don't even see them counting the people that often, where they had to pay that. You see David getting in big trouble for just counting the standing army when God did not command him to do that, right? And how many people died because of that? 70,000 people died because that was kind of a thing of pride that David was doing. He wanted to know how big was the standing army of Israel. And Joab even left off counting because he was so angry that David was counting all these people. And then God was angry with David for doing it. Because God doesn't want us being prideful in our great numbers and our great buildings, all the great things that we have. He wants us to count on him for all the blessings and our military might is through God, right? Or at least it was supposed to be for them. So now Jesus is asking this question about who do the kings of the earth take tribute to or from? Of their own children or of strangers? So there's different ways you can interpret this. Now Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So he could be saying this as in, well, I am a king so I really shouldn't have to pay this. Or he could be saying it in a way where he's saying, well, kings are not going to tax their own people necessarily. They're going to tax other nations that they conquer. Which you can see it both ways, but I think it could be taken both ways. Because the kings of Israel, who did they tax? They taxed the people that they conquered around them, didn't they? Who was David taxing to build the temple? Was he taxing his own people or was he taxing the people around him? He was conquering the people around him and he was taking the gold crown off their heads. He was taking the gold from them because they were coming at him and he was like, okay, well I might as well just take all your stuff too, how about that? And he just took all their stuff and built and laid up for the temple and all that. But you don't see in the Bible God saying, hey, this is for road construction, sewer systems, lighting bills. You just didn't see that because there really isn't a taxing system in that way for Israel. But do I think that paying taxes for those things is wrong? I don't think that, I think we have, I mean, do you guys like driving on roads? I like driving on roads. Do you like being able to have a flushing toilet? I like having a flushing toilet. I mean, it's a lot better going in an outhouse, isn't it? Do you like having running water? I like having running water. I mean, these are luxuries called infrastructure that civilized nations have. And they cost money. They cost money to maintain. So if we're getting taxed for things like that, no problem with that. I really don't have a problem with that. But when we're getting taxed for things so that people in different countries can have transgender surgeries, I do have a problem with that. I have a problem with my money going to Planned Parenthood to fund abortions. I have a problem with my money going to Politico so that they can rig the election for the Democrats so that they can be anti-MAGA for however many years. I mean, I have a problem with our country spending money where it doesn't belong. So I really don't have a problem with President Trump going through all the books and making sure that our tax dollars aren't getting wasted. Now, do I think that President Trump is this Messiah, like all these people are thinking? No, I don't think that at all. But I don't have a problem with some of the things that he's doing. I'm glad he's keeping men out of women's sports. Now, there's a question, should there be women's sports? I mean, that's a different question, right? But should men have to subsidize women's sports in the WNBA? Yeah, I don't think so. But, I mean, men shouldn't be in women's locker rooms while they're getting dressed. So I think that's pretty weird. But I'm going to get a little deeper into this story, though, because it says, Lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea and cast in a hook and take up a fish, the fish that first cometh up, and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money and take it and give unto them for me and thee. So what is he saying, though? He says the children are free. So what is Jesus saying? We shouldn't have to pay this, isn't he? That's what it seems like he's saying to me. So is he saying that him and Peter are children and they shouldn't have to pay the tax? It kind of seems like that's what he's saying to me. But, you know, if he's saying that he's a child of the king, because God the Father is the supreme king of the whole universe, then that would make him what? He's one of the children of the king. He's the son of God, right? And Peter, by adoption, is a son of God. So what would that mean? That no children of God would have to pay taxes, right? But we live in a world where we have to obey the laws of the land. So that's why he's saying, notwithstanding, unless we should offend them, go to the sea and cast a hook. I'm not saying we should try to weasel out of our taxes either. Like, hey, let's just do it this time just because they asked. No, you don't want to go to prison. And really, I think that we, you know, I'm going to be teaching this overall, we should stay out of entanglements with the world that are going to cause us to fall when our mission is not to avoid taxes. Our mission is to serve the Lord in any way we can and stay free from those worldly entanglements because money isn't everything. As a matter of fact, Jesus really didn't care about it. It was so much it was like he knew about some fish that had swallowed some coin, and he says, hey, cast your hook in and the first fish you catch. It's like he didn't make, he could have made money appear, couldn't he? Couldn't he just say, you know, be a coin in my hand, and it just appears in his hand? But he didn't do that because that would be counterfeiting, right? He's not going to counterfeit some money. He's just going to find some fish, and I don't know. I mean, he was a prophet, obviously. He could, he knew somehow. But there's a question about this passage in my mind because when I started looking at the modern versions of how they deal with this, and really what caused the question is in my e-sword where I do my copy and pasting for my sermon writing, I saw this little notation above it, and it says the census tax. And so when I started digging into it, I was like, census tax? That's not really what it's saying. Like, it says that they're receiving tribute money. So tribute money, that doesn't say census tax. But when you look at all the commentary, I mean, I was looking at tons of different commentary, and they're all saying this is a temple tax from Exodus chapter 30. And I'm like, that's not what it says, though. See, we have to be very careful what we're reading about what the Bible says, and even these little notations, you know, if you have a Bible, and it's just text only, and it doesn't, most of them will have little notations, though, above it, or little breaks in the story that'll say, does anybody have Bibles like that where it'll say, like, some little kind of break in the story and tell you what that passage is about? You've got to be careful about that, because it could put an impression in your mind about what that passage is about. So when I looked into this, then I started looking at the modern versions, it starts telling you in every modern version, it'll change this passage to say census tax, denarius, the half shekel, does your master pay the half shekel? And so it's, I believe the King James Bible is the word of God, and I don't think I have to go back to the Greek, I don't think I have to go to a commentary to figure these things out. I just want to see what they believed about this. And I'll tell you what I believe, I just believe that I can look at the Bible at face value and I can see what it's saying. And I know that Capernaum was the place where Matthew came from. Matthew was what? A publican. He was a tax collector. And he was at the seat of custom. You know, have you ever heard of customs? Or where people, you know, they take in and they tax people for things. He was at the receipt of customs where he's writing out the tax bills and he's making people pay taxes. Same thing with Zacchaeus, he was a publican. And so he's in Capernaum, though, and he just says, follow me, he drops everything and follows Jesus. In Capernaum. Capernaum was a well-known place where people paid taxes. It was just, it was one of those places. It was on a well-known highway where people traded goods and things like that. But to say that it was a temple tax, why would they ask Jesus to pay a temple tax in Capernaum? Why would they do that? Wouldn't they be asking someplace else, like maybe where the temple was? Because people have to go there several times a year, so if you have to go there at least three times a year, every male has to go there three times a year. Wouldn't they just say, have the guy right out front of the temple and say, have you paid your temple tax this year? But it's not a yearly thing. The Bible doesn't teach that anywhere. Turn to Exodus, chapter 30, let's look at what it says. Because where in that passage does it actually say that it's for the temple? It doesn't say that. So for all these people to just say, oh, that's what it is, all these commentaries that say that, where are they getting that from? I just don't understand where they're getting that from. Well, it's probably they're copying each other, or they're going back to some Greek text, some corrupted Greek text to find their answers. Or maybe it's just such a small amount that they just assume something, but I don't know where they're getting that because if I just read it in English and I should be able to read it in English and know what the Bible says, then I don't see where it says temple tax or how much money it is. But I guess, let's see, what does it say? Yeah, it says you'll find a piece of money, take it and give it to them for me and me. It says a piece of money, it doesn't say how much it is necessarily. But anyway, Exodus 30, verse 11 says, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou numberest them, that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. So, when they take a sum of the children of Israel, this is when they're counting them, when you're numbering them, that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them, this they shall give. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half shekel, after the half shekel of the sanctuary. A shekel is twenty geras. And half shekel shall be the offering of the Lord. So how much are they supposed to give? A half shekel, when they're numbering the people, when they're numbering the people. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than half a shekel. So it's a fair tax. Everybody, no matter how much money they have, has to give this amount. When they shall give an offering unto the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls. So when David didn't do this, that's why the wrath of the Lord came upon the children of Israel, because David counted the people, he counted the standing army, he counted how many soldiers he had, and then they didn't do the half shekel for the sanctuary, for the atonement for their souls, and that's why God started killing people by the angel of the Lord. And God's anger was kindled because of that. So, how many times do we see this happening? Well, we only see it happening a few times in the Bible. You know, when they came out of the Exodus, on the 40th year, they counted the people. Again, Joshua counts the people. But the first time, they count 603,550 men. So they all had to give that half shekel before they all go out of the Exodus. And then, in the time of David, Judah was estimated to have a population of 500,000, and Israel was estimated to have a population of 800,000. So, I was thinking, when they came back from Babylon, it does kind of count how many people come back, but that wasn't necessarily a standing army. But the Bible doesn't say you have to count everybody every year. In this country, I think it's what, every 10 years that they do a census? But it doesn't say that in the Bible. So, to assume that everybody was counted once every year, and that Jesus had to pay some half shekel or something, they're assuming these things. And then they'll go to history and say, well, this was an edict of the Pharisees or something like that. I don't really know if that's true or not, but even if it was, you still can't prove it through the Bible, through the King James, that this is what it was. So, why am I bringing this up? Well, because it's just a lesson to us that we can't, go ahead and turn to Numbers chapter 1, just a lesson to us that we can't count on the little margin notes in our Bible. Don't count on study Bibles. If you have a study Bible, just throw that thing in the trash and get yourself a text-only Bible. Because study Bibles can cause you to get lazy and not want to read the Bible for what it says and let the Bible define itself for what it is. You know, a lot of times, we'll struggle with what a word means, and the Bible will define itself for us instead of going to, even sometimes dictionary definitions are not even accurate as to what the Bible means of a word to say, like the word repent, for instance. Now, repent apparently means to turn from all your sins, but the word metanoia in the Greek actually means to change your mind, and that's what it means. I'm not trying to go back to the Greek, but that's what the word means. The word means to change your mind or to change your direction or to change whatever way you're going. So it depends on the context as to what you're repenting of, though. But when you look at a lexicon or you look at the strongest concordance, if you just look at the word repent, it has a whole bunch of different meanings to it. It's like, well, which one is it? So you've got to be careful with commentaries, little notes in your Bible, and get yourself a text-only Bible, or at least learn to avoid those things. Why do they count the people? Numbers chapter 1, verse 1, it says, And the Lord spake unto Moses and the wilderness of Sinai and the tabernacle of the congregation on the first day of the second month and the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their poles. So what is it saying to do? The sum, what does that mean? You're adding up, right? If you took arithmetic, hopefully everybody did. It's the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by the house of their fathers, every male by their poles, from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel, thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies, and with you there shall be a man of every tribe, every one head of the house of his fathers. So why are they counting them? Men that can go to war, that's why they're counting them. And that's why they had to pay that half shekel and it goes to the congregation, it goes for the house of the Lord for its repair and so on and so forth. So biblically speaking, they were not required to count the people every year. They didn't need to do it that often and when David did it, he tempted God and he upset God and 70,000 people died. So now let's turn to Luke chapter five, verse 27. Luke chapter five, verse 27. We'll see where Matthew is called and there's three different instances where it talks about Matthew and this is only, this one it calls them Levi. There's two books where it calls them Levi but there's, in Matthew it actually calls him Matthew and these three instances are the same thing. So he did have his name called Levi and also Matthew. So it says after these things, verse 27, he went forth and saw a publican named Levi sitting in the receipt of custom and he said unto him, follow me. And he left all, rose up and followed him and Levi made him a great feast in his own house and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them. But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against the disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners? So a publican is a tax collector and as you can see, they're not very favorably looked upon. Is the IRS and tax collectors very favorably looked upon in our society today? No, they're looked upon as thieves basically. Have you ever seen that same taxation as theft? You know why? Because it is. Because they always go overboard. They always take more than they should. Even Zacchaeus, when he gets saved, he's like, I'm gonna pay back all the stuff I've stolen, all the money I've taken that I shouldn't have taken, like I'll pay it back fourfold and all this stuff. You know why? Because they're taking more than they should and he knows it. He was probably skimming off the side and taking more than he should and obviously this is happening in our country today. This is probably the biggest money scandal in American history. The lid hasn't even fully been ripped off yet. I mean, they've only looked at one place and the democrats are already screaming that they're getting our social security numbers and they're having access to the treasury and all this stuff. They're just crying because they don't want all their stuff exposed. It's not just the democrats. I'm sure there's republicans that are hiding stuff too but they're just like, Elon shouldn't have access to all this stuff. Well, look, they already have access to all of our stuff. If they really want to know about us, you can just do a Google search on any of our names and they're gonna be able to find your address and anything they want about you. Anybody can do that. I mean, I've had weirdos track my house down just like that and they're getting pizzas delivered to my house so it's not real hard, all right? But people are freaking out about it and now they're gonna go to the Department of Education. You know, we are ranked last out of 40 countries in education and we spend the most per child out of all those countries. How does that work? It's because it's corrupt. The teacher's unions aren't doing too bad though. They're making all their money and they still cry and whine and go on protest and go on strike because they're not making enough money or whatever. And then they put all these sodomites into our schools and put their rainbow flags up and stuff in the schools and corrupt our children. I mean, the Department of Education does need to be rooted out. You know, root and stem. But how much money is being wasted on that? They shouldn't exist. I've said that for a long time, I agree. And they say it should go back to the states and parents should have a say in what's going on in their children's education. Obviously, we believe in homeschooling at this church and I think that that's probably the best way to go. But I mean, how many billions of dollars would our taxes be saved in if people just had to pay for their own education and take care of their own education? Billions of dollars would be saved, you know? So it's weird that we would spend the most and get the least out of it. That our kids would be the dumbest out of 40 countries and we spend the most money per capita on those students. So, but anyway. I rabbit trailed there for a second. So when it gets back to this temple tax thing, all these different scholars are saying that in our original text there is that this is a temple tax. But why do people think that? I really don't know why they think that. I just, all I can say is that they're changing what the Bible says in that passage. And think about this. If Jesus and Peter are over 20 years old, which I'm assuming they are. Jesus was 30 when he got baptized. Why would they even ask that question if that's what it was? I mean, every man over 20 years old that's able to go to war would have to pay that. They wouldn't be paying it in Capernaum. They'd be paying it in Jerusalem. And they wouldn't even ask that question. Why would you even ask that question? I believe that this is a tax from Caesar. That's what I think. I think this is a Roman tax and they probably from time to time had to pay different kinds of customs and dues. And it's, they're doing it to try to trap him and that's why they were asking the question in the first place. They do it again later on. So, let's see. So, when it does come to taxes though, the Romans were not all bad. Now, a lot of people hated them. The Jews definitely hated them. The Jews revolted against them to their own destruction. The temple was destroyed. But Jesus predicted this was gonna happen. He said that one stone would not be left upon another. The temple would be destroyed. Jerusalem would be destroyed. And it was because they rejected the Messiah. It wasn't because the Romans were bad. So, the Romans were bad in a lot of ways. But they weren't all bad. When they took over nations, they allowed them to keep a lot of their customs. They allowed them to keep a lot of their laws to an extent and they allowed them to worship whatever gods they believed in or whatever. And they also provided infrastructure, like I was saying. They put in the sewer systems. They put in the water. They put in all the, you know, they bring aqueducts in. They were amazing engineers. I mean, their aqueducts are still standing in a lot of places even to this day. Their roads, you know, a lot of the roads in European countries are built upon the Roman roads that were already in place. If you dig them down far enough, the Roman road is still there. In England, they have these really not very wide roads there because it was built on the Roman roads that were already there for 2,000 years. And people's houses and lands were already established way before modern times. And so, it's like you're always having to pull over and let some other car pass and then go around that car. It's because their roads weren't that wide. And, you know, you're gonna be making a lot of people mad that have owned that property for years if you just start widening things. It's an island. It doesn't, they don't have a lot of give. So, anyway, but, so they bring in their infrastructure, their running water, their sewer systems, protection from other nations. So, once you're under the protection of Rome, when someone tried to come mess with you, just like, you know, when Josh, what was it? Yeah, when Joshua and the Gibeonites were under attack, Joshua and the children of Israel came and protected them. So, once you're under the protection of the nation, you know, the nation of Rome or the imperial power of Rome, they would protect the people that came under their power. In exchange for what? Taxes. They paid them. That's how Rome had their power was that they would go and tax all the different nations that they conquered. So, I mean, yeah, it was bad that they conquered people, but in their mind, they're just trying to stop people from being barbarians and give a little culture, give a little infrastructure, and civilize the world. That's what they thought they were doing. The Greeks thought the same thing. You know, the Greeks thought that they were Hellenizing the world and making, you know, giving these uncultured swines some, you know, they were giving them some philosophy and some Plato and all this other stuff. Not Plato, but Plato. Probably Plato too, I don't know. But anyway, so they did do good in those ways, but, you know, the United States is a lot like the Roman Empire, and in many ways, we are like Rome. We are by far the most powerful nation on earth. We are the richest nation on earth, and I know, you know, some Russians would say, yeah, we're pretty close or whatever. No, you're not. Not even close. China would say that they're close. No, you're not. You're not even close. We are the richest nation, the most powerful. I'm not just saying that because I'm American. I'm just saying it's because it's a fact, okay? Why are people all upset? Because all the foreign funding's been cut off? Because we're, they're on the teat of the U.S. government. We're paying them, you know, we're under this national debt, trillions of dollars, $36.22 trillion in debt because we're not only funding all this crazy stuff that we found here, but funding other nations and giving them money every single month just because I guess we're friends with them or something? I don't know. But they can't, a lot of countries cannot exist off the GDP that they have because they can't afford to exist without us, and it's just a fact that we are the richest nation on earth. Probably the richest nation that's ever been in existence. So, and as you can see by the biggest embezzlement scandal of all time hatching before our eyes, our tax dollars are being spent on some of the most wicked and wasteful things you could ever imagine. So, and that's just surface level. What about the stuff that they're hiding from us that we haven't even seen, that we probably never will see? So, $36.22 trillion is the national debt as of 1.22 a.m. when I was still finishing this sermon. And there's like a clock that continuously runs and we're continuously paying interest on this every second of every day. You can actually look up the national debt clock and it just continues to run and run and run and run. So, but the big difference in how Romans taxed, they taxed its citizens for a while, but the U.S., they taxed their citizens hard and harder than the Roman government ever taxed, at least as far as I know, ever taxed their citizens. See, the Romans, they taxed their citizens for a time and then once they conquered enough nations, then they just took the money from them and they did tariffs on them and then the citizens stopped having to pay taxes and they just took the money from the other nations. We're the opposite. We get everything from the back of the workers and the people that live here and then give it away to all the foreign nations, which is just bizarre. I don't understand how that works, but that's how it works. So, you know, Rome, in its heyday, they, in their zenith of their power, they did not tax their own citizens. And the United States, we didn't even tax, we didn't do federal income tax until February 25th, 1913. Federal tax did not exist. We don't understand this because we pay massive amounts of taxes all the time, but we are taxed way more than the founding, during the founding of our nation, they were paying squat in taxes and they were whining about it and revolting against the King of England over it over a far less egregious tax system. I know that there was circumstances, I get that, but it was way less than what we're paying now, trust me. We're paying on federal taxes. We're not paying state taxes, but we pay on everything we buy in Washington state. We pay on the pump every time we go to the gas station. There's sin taxes and hopefully none of us are paying those. That's alcohol, tobacco, and probably gambling or whatever. But obviously you guys should stay away from those. You should be safe from the sin tax. If not, you deserve it. And don't let me find out that you're doing it. But anyway, we're taxed on everything we do. And then they want to tax us on our inheritance. There's a huge inheritance tax. So if I buy a house that I've bought and paid for, I paid taxes for, I paid all the interest for it, and then when I die and I want to give it to my kids, they have to pay a huge, I can't even remember what the tax is, it's a huge amount of taxes to give it to my kids as an inheritance. So then they take it, after it's already gotten all these taxes paid on it, then they tax it again. That's wrong. And they do property taxes. Oh, I forgot about that. Property taxes, sales tax, gas tax, federal taxes. We are taxed beyond belief, and then they just, all the little dues and all the little fees, and if your concrete's cracked on the sidewalk, that's the city sidewalk, then they make you repair it. Or if your sewer system is bad in front of your house, they make all the people in that neighborhood pitch in to repair it, and they just figure out how much it costs. Well, why am I paying a sewer bill then? Why am I paying $150 every two months or whatever it is for my water, sewer, and garbage to maintain a system that's already been in place for years and then I have to help repair the whole system? I know someone that had to pay $10,000 or something like that per neighbor in this one street so that they could have their sewer repaired. That's the city sewer system. I thought that's why we paid so much money, but no, they just tax us on everything. You're like, Pastor Thompson, why are you just preaching a sermon about complaining about taxes? Well, because it makes me mad, that's why. It should make you mad, too, that they're robbing you and paying all this garbage with your tax money. You're like, well, what's your solution, Pastor? Are we just gonna stop paying taxes? No, because I don't want to go to jail, but I don't believe that we should be having to pay all this garbage, all these taxes. Again, when we pay utilities, I thought that money went to pay utilities, but now they want to jack up the gas prices because it's bad for the environment or whatever. It's called natural gas. It comes naturally out of the ground, but somehow it's bad. Electricity, good. Natural gas, bad. But electricity, you have to burn all kinds of coal to make the coal plants to get the electricity. Our grid can't even handle, if everything went electric car tomorrow, our grid could not handle it. California's grid can't handle it, and they passed a law saying I think that everything by 2030 had to be electric cars. That's not gonna happen. They already have rolling blackouts. These people are insane that try to rule our world, but it's just like a game to them or something. They're just making money, hand over a fist, putting all this money. They never wanted us to see that stuff get uncovered, all the stuff that they're doing, and I have a little list of stuff that our tax money was being paid for, and you guys probably will have numbers that I'm leaving out, and I want you to blur them out, guys, if you know them. But the founding fathers, or the country that the colonials that were the colonies of England, the 13 colonies, original colonies, they were sick of not having representation. They felt like they had an equal right to not be taxed, that the king couldn't just say, hey, you're gonna have to pay taxes, because under parliamentary rules, the king couldn't just do that, but since we were a colony and not necessarily the mainland England, they would just tax us in ways that they weren't allowed to do in England. That's really kind of what the fight was about. Am I right about that, brother Bill? Kind of? Kind of? Go ahead. Originally they were ruled by the king's charter. Yeah. But as part of the rule of power, there would more be ruled by parliament without being able to vote. Yeah, so they weren't being allowed to vote. So basically it's kind of like being part of the city of Vancouver, but you're in Clark County, and so you don't have a say in what the city says, and so we have to pay higher utility bills. Being in Clark County, we're supposedly in the city limits, but we don't get the city limit luxury. So it's kind of like that in a way. So the people were upset about it, and they were upset about the Townsend Act and the Stamp Act, and that's why they got really upset. They got really upset. The Tea Tax and the Tea Hikes and all that, and they revolted. Now, England did try to appease them and walk some of this stuff back, but it was already too late, and the people were already mad, so they revolted. But the only reason I bring that up is because they revolted over way less than we're getting taxed for. We're getting taxed, and I'm not saying we should revolt. I mean, that's insurrection against the government. I don't believe we should do that. But the Romans did not always tax the citizens. From 509 to 527 BC, they occasionally taxed citizens, but from 167 BC, they stopped taxing Italian citizens. Instead, they taxed the provinces they conquered. So when they got to Jerusalem, who were they taxing? They were taxing the Israelites. They were taxing the people of Judah. So when they defeated these nations, they would put all their stuff on them, and then they would tax them. They would put their military and make sure everything was safe and whatever, but then they would tax them. So here's what the commentaries say, though, about the whole, so because I believe that the commentaries are wrong. I believe that the modern Bible versions are wrong about it being some kind of temple tax. Here's what the NASB says. When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the two drachma tax came to Peter and said, does your teacher not pay the two drachma tax? Is that what the King James Bible says? Is that what it said? No. American Standard Version says, and when they were come to Capernaum, they that received the half shekel came to Peter and said, doth not your teacher pay the half shekel? Is that what the King James says? Here's the Berean Study Bible. After they had arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two drachma tax came to Peter and asked, doth your teacher pay the two drachmas? The Douay-Rheims Bible says, and when they were come to Capernaum that received the drachmas, said to Peter, came to Peter and said, doth not your master pay the drachmas? You see how they're changing what the Bible says? That's not what the Bible says. Here's the English Revised Standard Version. And when they were come to Capernaum, they received the half shekel. They that received the half shekel came to Peter, doth not your master pay the half shekel? And here's what the New King James Version says. Supposedly, the better updated King James says, and they came, and when they came to Capernaum, those who received the temple tax, now they're calling it the temple tax, came to Peter and said, does your teacher not pay the temple tax? So, you know, here's the funny thing. People will say, well, it's all the word of God. How can they all be the word of God if they all say different things? Is it the two drachma tax? Is it the half shekel tax? Or is it the temple tax? Or is it just what the Bible, the real Bible says? What does the real Bible say? What does it say? It says they received the tribute money. Doth not your master pay tribute. That's different, isn't it? That's not talking about the temple tax, is it? Tribute is what you give to Caesar. Tribute is taxes. That has nothing to do with the temple. Where does it say the temple? How are they determining to translate it as that? They're not. And the reason why I'm bringing that up is because there's a theme in the gospels about them trying to get Jesus in trouble with the government. And how are they trying to do that? By saying he doesn't pay taxes. He doesn't agree with paying taxes. And what I believe is that, yeah, I don't agree with it either. And I don't think Jesus agrees with it either because he says the children are free, right? But, he says, lest we offend them, hey, go catch this fish and pay the taxes anyway. So what's he saying? That we should take our name out and change our names and take our social security number out of the system and that we should try to find some way to avoid paying taxes? No, he says just pay it. We should pay it. And obviously God knows that we can't avoid that or we're gonna go to prison. So he just says let's not worry about that. I mean, when I worked at PBOT, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, I watched them make us scrap and grovel for money and strike for money the workers that are actually out there doing the work in the cold and responding to emergencies and doing the work while they sat at home during COVID in their fuzzy slippers doing nothing, bean counting, which they probably weren't even doing that because there was no beans to count because we weren't really doing anything of note but DEI hiring a bunch of people that don't know anything about what we're doing. And what do I mean by that? Hiring a bunch of fags to do jobs that real men should be doing. That's what they were doing. Passing over able-bodied men that worked construction their whole lives and knew exactly what they were doing that actually drove equipment before and worked jobs like this and having some fat bull dyke come in and take a man's job while they get hurt lifting a box or something and then sit at home and then they put them in a dump truck and then the men have to work. They send the men out to do the work and they get to put around and do stuff that doesn't matter and they hide those numbers and then they get paid the same amount of money I do and then I get in trouble because I didn't cover for what they did that day which was nothing. Yeah, I mean, it's sickening but this is how the government operates and I watch them spend money and have us sit in classes where a bunch of DEI terrorists come in and tell us that white people have it made and that we should be ashamed that we're white and we were born white. It's like, I'm not gonna be ashamed of that and I don't see it that way. I was white and I was last on the list because I was white. So, and I had to work hard to even get my job there. I had to do the interview of my life to get that job. I was like, giving it my all. My hair had to be perfect. My clothes had to be perfect that day. I mean, it was the best interview I ever gave in my life because I was last on the list. People get hired for points that they don't deserve. It's just wrong. So when people are like, it's racist to say that you don't want DEI hiring. I just think that the best person for the job should get it. There's nothing wrong with saying that and because someone's a lesbian, how does that make them get points more than me? It's wrong. So anyway, that's another sidetrack. So I heard that the number $600 million for every two months to bring illegals across the border, that's a lot of money. I don't know if that number's confirmed but I've heard that number thrown around twice. So again, don't quote me on that one but that's a lot of money. $600 million every two months. And look, I don't think, I'm not bagging on illegals unless they're criminals. If they're like Venezuelan gangs that are taking over apartment complexes and stuff, I do have a problem with them. Get them the heck out of our country, right? But law abiding citizens, people that want to be citizens, I mean I agree that the law should be done right. Let's bring people in lawfully but we can't overload our system. So what should we do though? Should we render unto Caesar? Well that's what Jesus said, render unto Caesar. What does that mean? Pay the tribute, pay the taxes. It's like pay the taxes, pay your taxes. Well I mean, I'm not really fired up about it really. But it's better than saying don't pay your taxes and try to find a way to get out of it. Like that'd be wrong for me to say that because that's not what Jesus taught. He just said do it anyway even though we really shouldn't have to. What are taxes? A compulsory contribution to state revenue levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some good services and transactions. What are dues? An obligatory payment or fee. What is tribute? A payment made periodically by one state or ruler to another especially as a sign of dependence. So when the King James translate that tribute, that's what it's saying, a payment made periodically by one state or ruler to another especially as a sign of dependence. So why would that be anything to do with the temple? That has nothing to do with the temple. Turn to Luke chapter 20, Luke chapter 20, verse 19. Luke chapter 20, verse 19, the Bible says, and the chief priests and the scribes of the same hour sought to lay hands on him and they feared the people for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them and they watched him and sent for spies which should feign themselves just men. They were pretending to be saved, isn't that weird? That they might take hold of his words that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor. So they're trying to get him in trouble with the government, isn't that what it's saying? Pilate is the governor. And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly. That's called flattery. Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar or no? So it just got done telling us what they're trying to do. They're trying to trap him, they're trying to get him in trouble so they can turn him into the government. Isn't that what it said? And then they asked this question. Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, yes or no? What's it say, tribute, right? Isn't that where we started in Matthew? Didn't it say tribute? But that's a temple tax. No, it's not. But anyway, so this is a trap question because they know that paying taxes is not biblical in the sense that the way the Gentiles do it. They probably know how Jesus feels about it. So when he answers that question, they think that they're gonna be able to trap him because they think that he's gonna say no. But he's smarter than they are every time. He always has the right answer. And the other thing they don't realize is that God sent Jesus under the Roman Empire but not to be the king of the world at this time. He is the king. But he's not coming to rule until when he comes back as the lion of the tribe of Judah. This time he's coming to have grace and mercy and to sacrifice himself as our savior. But he also is that rock that rolls in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. There's that statue with the Babylonians, the Mede-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, and the two legs of iron are the Roman Empire. He's living under this time, and then there's the ten-toed kingdom of iron mixed with clay. And Jesus is the rock that comes rolling off the mountain and smashes that statue into a billion pieces or whatever. He destroys it. But Jesus was never planning on rebelling against Rome at this point because that ten-toed kingdom is still yet to come. So Jesus is the kingdom that is not made with hands. His kingdom is not of this world. He tells that to Pilate when he's crucifying him. He said, my kingdom is not of this world, or else my disciples would fight. So this is not the time to fight. This is not the time to fight over taxes. This is not the time to fight with an army. This is not the time to fight in a physical battle. So it's not the time to die over a tax bill because the minute he says, I don't agree with paying taxes to Caesar, what would happen to him? They'd grab him right then and crucify him. And then Jesus would be dying for what? Going against what Caesar said. Because they did not crucify their own citizens. They crucified slaves. They crucified people from other countries as a warning to not cross the Roman Empire. But they generally did not crucify their own citizens. That was a punishment for slaves, generally. Now, paying taxes is as sure as death today for us. They say that saying, the only guarantees in this life are death and taxes. You ever heard that before? So it is pretty sure that we're gonna pay taxes today. And I believe this, that the founding fathers of this nation would surely be rolling around in their graves if they saw the taxes that we're paying right now. But, you know, we kind of reap what we sow. So, revolting the way we did over what we did, over what was happening then, you know, I don't know, maybe we're paying for what our forefathers did. I'm not sure about that, but I'm sure people would disagree with me. But, whatever. I mean, if this is Babylon USA, then, you know, America has an end. So, what's being exposed right now is pretty crazy though. And there's more to come, I'm sure. Look at verse 23, it says, But he perceived their craftiness, so he knew what they were trying to do, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Show me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's. So, clearly Jesus is defining that Caesar has power and we should render unto him the things that belong to him. Now, we don't serve Caesar. Caesar is not, we don't have Caesar. We have a president. It's a little different. But, someday there probably will be somebody like Caesar. And, you know, things are gonna probably change. There will be an anti-Christ that rules the whole world. But, right now we don't have that. We have the Constitution that's our highest, our highest power in this country. But, in my opinion, Jesus is stating it's not worth literally dying for. You know, he's not dying for taxes. He's not gonna say, Hey, you know, I really don't agree with this. Because the minute he says that, he's gonna get killed for it. It's not worth it. So, he said, But unto God the things that be God's. So, it's not worth it to, you know, give up your life for taxes. Look, Kent Hovind did 10 years in prison for structuring. He was pulling out $9,999 to pay his payroll taxes. And, he was doing that on purpose to avoid having to fill out that slip. So, people can say, Well, he didn't deserve that. I agree, he probably didn't deserve that. But, he was doing that to avoid that. And, that was for drug dealers. That was set up for drug dealers. I agree, he wasn't a drug dealer. But, he was avoiding doing any kind of taxes. And, he had all this weird ways to avoid paying taxes or whatever. But, should he have done 10 years in prison for that? I mean, there's pedophiles that don't do 10 days for some of the stuff that they've done. There's a lot of worse things out there than avoiding taxes. But, you know, that's what happens when you mess with the federal government. That's what happens when you mess with the IRS. They will find a way to get you. So, there's no reason to just die on that hill, so to speak. Jesus died on the hill for the right things. He died on the hill of Calvary for the right things. We shouldn't die on the hill for the wrong things. I hate paying taxes just as much as anybody else. And, I hate seeing my tax dollars wasted just as much as anybody else. But, I don't think we should monkey around and mess around with trying to take advantage. I mean, obviously, if you have a tax loophole, take advantage of it, if it's not illegal. But, don't seek out some way to try to avoid it when it's gonna get you in trouble. Use it to your advantage legally. That's what Donald Trump said. That's one of the things that made him famous. He said, I know that there's loopholes in the system because I use it. But, so does Hillary and all of her friends. It was like the mic drop or whatever because all their friends are billionaires and they use the same thing. So, it's not his fault that he used the tax code for his purposes because it's written to help out rich people. It's the truth. And, I'm not saying it's right, but it doesn't really help the working man too much. It doesn't really help the middle class. The middle class is kind of dead now. It's like kind of really a big gap in between rich and poor people. So, I think, I wanna run for president next year or the next year that you can. Will you vote for me? Cause I'm gonna promise to give every American one million dollars, every American, no matter how poor they are or how rich they are. Even if they're a billionaire, I'll give them a million dollars. Because if they can waste all the money that they've wasted on all the crap that they've wasted it on that we've seen just this last week, then surely they could afford to give each American a million dollars. There's only 300 million people that live here, folks. They wasted 1.5 million to advance DEI and Serbia workplaces. 70,000 for production of DEI musical in Ireland. 47,000 for a trans opera in Columbia. 32,000 for a trans comic book in Peru. 50 million was stopped from sending condoms to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. 361,000 to teach fags how to farm. 124,000 to teach, I don't even know how you, Kyrgyzstan youth to go viral, whatever that means. Three million for girl centered climate action. Two million for border security in Paraguay. 1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia's workplace. Two million for sex changes and fag activism in Guatemala. 2.5 million electric vehicles in Vietnam. 70,000 for DEI musical, already said the Ireland thing. Six million to fund tourism in Egypt. How does tourism in Egypt not sell itself? I mean, you got three of those giant pyramids and all the, I mean, the Sphinx, I mean, doesn't that just, you just put some pictures online? Why do we need to fund Egypt's tourism? That doesn't make sense. And that's just some things. Does anybody have anything else that, any numbers pop up, Brother Sean? 27 million for gift baskets for what? For illegal aliens. For illegal aliens. Yeah, I mean, they didn't have money to give to the hurricane victims. I think, and I wanna say that they tried to offer 700 bucks each. 700 bucks each? How about the 60 billion dollars that they gave to Ukraine to fight in a war that's still going on that has nothing to do with this? After the CIA overthrew their government in 2014 and installed Vladimir Zelensky as their comedian homo or whatever he is, he's not even elected. You wanna call Putin some kind of maniac or whatever? Well, what is he? He isn't elected either. Did they hold elections for him this year? No, he just stays in office. He's an American puppet is what he is, and they're just funneling money to him. He just comes over in his sweatpants and asks for more billions of dollars every so often. He can't even wear a suit and tie? What is it, casual Friday every time he comes over here or something? 60 billion dollars. I think we could afford to give every American one million dollars. One million dollars. Will you vote for me? I mean, come on. And look, I'm not for just giving away money, like Oprah or whatever. I'm giving everything, everybody's everything, whatever. But I mean, when you hear lists like this, they're spending money in all these different countries to promote, like in Africa they're giving all these billions of dollars to promote homo agendas there? Spending money to get Christians banned from there? Remember that, several years back? Here's 700 bucks, I'm sorry your house is destroyed. Here's 700 bucks, I'm sorry you can't rebuild your house in California because all the insurance places left because you don't know how to manage water correctly, because you saved some fishies or something, because you don't know how to manage your state correctly, probably the greatest state in the whole union and they just can't manage it right because there's a bunch of looney tunes there. I mean, we can give all this money away to all these foreign nations, and if it is true that it's 600 million dollars every two months to bring illegals across the border and we can't help our own citizens in North Carolina, we can't help our own citizens in California and help them rebuild their homes, why can't you just give them the money? Why can't you just build their houses? Why can't we just build back their infrastructure? We can't help the homeless here, we'll just build a bunch of stuff that they won't use, give them a bunch of tents that they'll just set up one day and sleep in it one night and then let it get destroyed the next and then just give another REI tent and just let them camp out in all of our areas. I'll just give them a million dollars and whether they shoot that or smoke that or whatever they do with it, that's on them, but they're not getting another million and I'm sure a lot of us would do well with it, I know what I'd do with it, 10% going to the church, mission trips, here we go, woo! You better give 10%. You see what I'm saying though? How is it that we can give away that much money and it's off the backs of our own people? Which most countries won't even, Rome didn't do that. At least they went and conquered people and took their money. We're doing it off the backs of our own people and then giving it away to everybody else. How does that even make sense? So they can just rob us blind? That's ridiculous. Here's 700 bucks, hope this helps, God bless. Be ye warmed and filled. This is ridiculous, man, it really is. Anyway, I don't have time to get to this because we're done, but what are the takeaways from this? I don't know, it was kind of all a train wreck, wasn't it? In Romans 13 it does kind of explain to us that we should be subject unto the powers and so on and so forth. Render their dues, tribute to him, tribute, custom, fear to him, honor to him, honor. But they're supposed to be doing their job too. They're supposed to be protecting us. They're supposed to be watching out for us. We're supposed to be not doing evil, but they're supposed to be rewarding those that do good and punishing the evildoers, but they're doing the opposite. But we are living in the last days, folks. We're not, the temple isn't being built, the antichrist isn't about to come right now, but we're getting closer, so obviously there's a lot of corruption going on. But we do have a lot of good things in America, so we shouldn't be so upset about everything, but it does kind of make you mad when you see your money going to waste. But just know this, we can't stop them from taking it out of our paychecks. So if you get a paycheck, or if you have compulsory taxes you have to pay, you can't stop that from happening. So it's almost like they just steal it right out of your, because I mean, every month, or every paycheck, money just gets stolen right out of my account. So if you look at it like they're just stealing it from your account and there's nothing you can do about it, then it kind of helps you feel better about it. Because if your money's going to drag queen story hour in Venezuela or something, you couldn't stop that from happening. So don't feel like you're sinning because that happened. It's not your fault, they stole it from you. Because they shouldn't be doing that. Yeah, go ahead, another number. Yeah, like George Soros needs more money. 260, they backdoored him back. Yeah, a lot of that USID money was going back to the people that were kind of setting up the funding. It was kind of like this, you know, shake your hand, give you the money, and then you give it back to me type of stuff. It's all wild and wicked, but the takeaways, yeah, be mad about the money being wasted and see how you can pay less taxes, but don't do anything illegal. Vote for me for a president, I'll give everybody a million dollars. Don't mess around with your taxes. Take advantage of tax loopholes. Don't get caught cheating on your taxes. Render unto Caesar. I think that that's what Jesus is saying. Hey, give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. But also don't forget this part. Render unto God the things that are God's. Don't forget about God, because God, we're supposed to give the first fruits unto him. So we don't forget about that, and that's it, let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your clear instructions, and Lord, even though we're mad about some of the ways that we're taking advantage of in this world, we know that there's coming a day when we don't have to worry about taxes and being taken advantage of, and Lord, that you're gonna be fair and honest, and you're a just judge, and Lord, the things that they are doing in our world that we can't see, and even the things that we can see that we can't do anything about, Lord, we know that you'll take vengeance for those things, and Lord, we pray that you'd help us to see things in a correct way, knowing that we can't really do anything to stop it. Help us to have a good attitude and be positive, even though there's so many negative things in our world, Lord, we pray that you'd bless us as we go soloing today, and we pray that you would bless the rest of our day here in Jesus' name, we pray, amen. Amen. And we will surely give you rest by trusting in His rule. Only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him, Lord. He will save you, He will save you, He will save you now. For Jesus shed His precious blood, prepared for sins to be stole. Plunged now into the crimson flood, and ashes void of snow. Only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him, Lord. He will save you, He will save you, He will save you now. Yes, Jesus is the truth away, and leads you into trust. We live in Him without delay, and who art for the past. Only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him, Lord. We will save you, He will save you now. Come then and join this holy band, and come to glory, Lord, to dwell Him not till there's no land where joys He o'er the whole. Only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him, Lord. He will save you, He will save you, He will save you now. . . . . .