2025.08.30 Hopewell @Home ▫ Matthew 22:15–22

Read Matthew 22:15–22

Questions from the Scripture text: Who plotted to do what (Matthew 22:15)? Whom did they send to Jesus (Matthew 22:16)? With whom? What do they say about Him? What do they ask Him (Matthew 22:17)? What does Jesus perceive (Matthew 22:18)? What does He ask them? What does He tell them to do (Matthew 22:19)? Then what does He ask them (Matthew 22:20)? What do they answer (Matthew 22:21)? And what, then, is His answer? How do they respond to this (Matthew 22:22)?

Whose glory and authority should we honor? Matthew 22:15–22 looks forward to the evening sermon on the coming Lord’s Day. In these fourteen verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that we honor all glory and authority, and therefore especially Christ’s glory and authority as God Himself.

The Pharisees are too afraid even to do their own entrapping (v15), so they send their disciples (v16). The Herodians are there, so that Jesus can be charged with sedition or treason, when He says that they should not pay taxes to Caesar (v17). But this is not what He says. He knows their wickedness, and that they are pretending to have a genuine question for a Teacher, when they instead have a trap for a target (v18). 

Jesus makes a curious request, for the coin in v19, and holding it, asks the question about the image and inscription (v20). This enables His answer (v21) to work on three levels. 

First, the fact that Caesar has risen to such prominence is under the sovereign providence of God (cf. Rom 13:1), so they should pay taxes to whom taxes are due (cf. Rom 13:7). 

Second, they themselves are made in the image of God, and subject to His “inscription” (the Scriptures). They have been hypocrites who pretend to care what God sees and does, but they are not giving due weight to being made in His image or subject to His Word. 

Third, and most important, Jesus Himself is the image of God (cf. Heb 1:3) and the inscription/Word of God to us (cf. Heb 1:1; Jn 1:14). If they were really concerned to respond rightly to glory and authority, they would be falling on their faces to worship Him, and governing their lives by obedience to Him and His Word.

Dear reader, pay your taxes, offer your self and obedience to God in worship, and worship and obey Jesus Christ!

What authority do you have difficulty submitting to? How are you applying being made in God’s image? Whom do you know Jesus to be, and how are you responding to Him, and to this reality about Him?

Sample prayer:  Lord, thank You for giving us to behold Your glory in Your Son. And thank You for speaking to us by Your Son. Please give us to worship You, worshipping Him, with our whole selves and whole lives, we ask in His Name, AMEN!

 Suggested songs: ARP2 “Why Do Gentile Nations Rage” or TPH270 “At the Name of Jesus”