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Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew, the 22nd chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 15. "Then the Pharisees went and took counsel how to entangle Jesus in his talk. And they sent their disciples to

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him along with the Herodians saying, 'Teacher we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully and care for no man for you do not regard the position of men. Tell us then what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?' But Jesus aware of their malice said, 'Why put me to the test you

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hypocrites? Show me the money for the tax.' And they brought him a coin. And Jesus said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said, 'Caesar's.' Then he said to them, 'Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' And when they heard it they marveled and

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they left him and went away." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. There is a saying that politics makes strange bedfellows. I would like to

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suggest this morning that unbelief also makes strange bedfellows. The Pharisees and the Sadducees did not ordinarily get along. But they united in their opposition to Jesus and they sent some of their brightest young disciples to try to put Jesus on the spot. The method was to ask him this question, 'Is it

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lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?' Now that may not seem like a troubling question but it actually put Jesus in the position of a dangerous dilemma. For if he said, 'Yes, one should pay taxes,' then the people would reject him for they despise Caesar. On the other hand, if he said, 'No, one should not pay taxes to

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Caesar,' then the Romans would arrest him and accuse him of preaching insurrection. Jesus' response is at one and the same time very clever and very profound. He says, 'Bring me a coin.' The coin they brought was the denarius, equal to about a day's wages. Now in those days it was the custom for the reigning king or

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monarch to have his name and his inscription appear on the coinage issued during his reign. So Jesus says to them, 'Whose image and superscription is on the coin?' They answered, 'Caesar's.' And Jesus replied, 'Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God.' And the

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Sadducees and the Pharisees went baffled away." Now I do not want to think any more about Sadducees or Pharisees and I don't want to talk about Jesus' profound response, "Render to Caesar and render to God." I'm instead interested in the way Jesus responded to these people. What he said to them was, "What does your money

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say?" We have an expression, "Money talks." I have a friend who says, "Yes, money talks and all it ever says to me is goodbye." What would be the message that our money would carry for us today if Jesus were to take a one-dollar bill and say, "Whose image and inscription is there on it?"

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Well, first of all, we see on a one-dollar bill the picture of George Washington. It's interesting, isn't it, how men get their faces on money but women get their hands on it. We don't know as much about George Washington as we would like to know. For

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some reason lost to us, his family destroyed most of his papers after his death. The scholars seem to agree that George Washington was not a person of extreme or profound ability, but rather he was a rather average man who used every skill and talent he had to the nth degree. In Christian terms, we would say

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that the man was a superb steward. A steward is a person who uses what belongs to someone else in the service of that other person. George Washington was always very reticent about his faith. He did not talk much about it, yet it's clear that he was a man of faith. He attended a worship service before his

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inauguration. He prayed throughout his inauguration. He went to another worship service following his inauguration. He was the one who added on to the oath of office, "So help me God." He not only held his hand on the Bible but bent forward and kissed it after he had taken the oath. He regularly contributed to the

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work of the church. He served two terms as a church warden in the Episcopal Church. He insisted on chaplains for his troops, and he had prayer and fasting both before and after all of the major battles in which he led his countrymen. One clergyman went to George Washington on one occasion and praised him for his

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service of his country, and George Washington responded, "We all do what we can do." Well, that's what stewardship is. Stewardship is to understand that what you have, you have from God, and you do everything you can with it. And we as Presbyterians grasp this, for when we become Presbyterians, when we take that

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oath and make those solemn promises, which is part of our obligation for membership in the Presbyterian Church, we pledge ourselves to use our skills and our talents to the glory of God, to the blessing of others, and also to the service of ourselves. No Presbyterian, it seems to me, could ever subscribe to the

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philosophy of Ayn Rand, that woman philosopher who died just a few years ago, who does have a wide following in the United States. Her central thrust was that every person ought to seek first of all to serve his or her own ego. Rand said on one occasion that the best of all situation would be to have everybody

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else be generous, and you not be generous, but keep that fact a secret. That's not the way a Christian thinks. Although I must say to you in all honesty that there are 300 members of this congregation who, to one degree or another, think like that. They give nothing of their time, they give nothing

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of their talent, and they give nothing of their treasure to the service of God through this congregation. One out of every five of our members is altogether uninvolved when it comes to stewardship. Well, they say money talks, and one of the things the one dollar bill says to us by its picture of George Washington is that

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we are to use what we have to the honor and glory of God and others in ourselves, but there's more on the dollar bill. Look on the other side. You find on the right an eagle surrounded by a circle. Now the eagle is the emblem of the United States and the circle, according to the designer of the one dollar bill, represents the

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creative power of God. In other words, what is being said here is that our nation, everything that exists, is the result of the creative power of God. Julian of Norwich, one of the great mystics of the church, lived about a thousand years ago, and she had a vision, and in that vision she saw God walking,

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and in his hand he held what she thought at first to be a nut, but when she looked at it in her vision, she saw that it was the sum total of everything God had made. What she was saying by that vision, of course, is that God is so vast that he holds the whole world, the whole solar system, the whole universe in his hand. We

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have a song about that. He's got the whole world in his hand. What's being said, you see, by this symbol is that we don't really own anything. We're not the proprietors of the earth, we're the guests of God here. When Commodore Vanderbilt died, two men were reading the story standing on a street corner in New

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York City, and one of them reported the death, and the other said how much did he leave, and the other one immediately responded, "All of it." Well, that's the fact of the matter. We don't bring anything when we come, and we don't take anything when we go, because, you see, the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness

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thereof. And one of the things that this bill says to us by putting our country within the circle of the creative power of God is that everything that is made is God's. We are, as his stewards, only handling his loose change for a while. Now, opposite that circle, on the other end of the bill, you will see within that

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circle the words "annuit coipsis," which means, translated literally, "God has blessed our undertakings." What's being said to us by that phrase is, you see, that all the success that we have in life is a gift of God to us. I think it's interesting to observe that Jesus, in all of his ministry, only called one man a

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fool. The story is recorded in Luke chapter 12. You remember, it was the fellow who was very successful, and so he decided he would build even bigger barns to hold his greater profits, and then he would say to himself, "Soul, take thy knees." Now, that little passage of Scripture is 61 words long in the English language.

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It's only 45 words long in the Greek language, but no matter which language you read it in, the word "I," or its equivalent, or the word "my," or its equivalent, appears 12 times. "My fruit, my barns, my goods, my soul." Jesus says, "Thou fool, this night thy soul will be required of thee," and he lost his life,

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and he lost his soul, and he lost his joy. He lived, you see, like some sublimated chipmunk, gloating over all the acorns he had accumulated. The Scriptures say of such ones, "The fool says in his heart there is no God," for this person, you see, does not acknowledge God, but acknowledges only his own success. And

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what this says to us, when it reminds us that God blesses our understanding, the voice of our legal tender is not so tender here. It says, "God, not ourselves, he is the one who blesses our undertaking." Now, right underneath those words, you'll notice an unfinished pyramid, and over the pyramid, an "I." Now,

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that unfinished pyramid indicates that the nation is still being built, and the "I" indicates that it is being built with God watching. That is, that he expects us to build, and he has great expectations about what we will build. This is another message about our stewardship. We're to be engaged in building not only a nation,

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but also nothing less than the kingdom of God, and God is watching us to see how we do this. Here's a visual reminder of that. It's interesting, isn't it, that this reminder is in our pockets, and yet some people wear more money on their wrist than they give to the service of Christ in all of the efforts of the church

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throughout a year. I had a man in the first church I served who belonged to that church for 14 years, and when he died, he spent more money on his casket that he gave to the church in the whole 14 years. I wonder what God thinks when he sees that kind of thing. You know, in reality, there are only three kinds of

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givers. There are those, first of all, who kind of give God as can. Now, they don't make a pledge to the work of the church. They're willing to sign a pledge to pay off their house, or their automobile, or some other large possession that they make, but they will make no pledge to the church, even though that pledge is not

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altogether binding. And what they say is, "I'll just give as I'm able to give." And the average person in this church gives about $8.56 a week, as they can. I sometimes wonder about that philosophy of giving. I had a friend, Ray Knott, who was in the national mission field for many years. He ministered to sheepherders

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and ranchers out in Colorado, and Wyoming, and Montana. And one morning, he got a call from the post office that a large box had arrived, and that he should bring his little truck down to pick it up. So he drove down. They told him to come to the back of the station. So he went around the back of the post office, and

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it was a great big cardboard box. And he said, "Would you help me carry it?" And they said, "Well, you won't need any help. It's very lightweight. It's very large, but it's also very lightweight." And he went over, and he picked it up. And as he walked out to his little truck, the bottom of the box fell out. And suddenly,

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at his feet, and spilling all over the stairs in the alley, were hundreds of gaily wrapped popcorn balls. Some church back east figured, I guess they didn't know how to make popcorn out in Colorado, and Montana, and Wyoming. So in the name of Jesus, they sent this man serving these people hundreds of popcorn balls.

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There are a lot of people whose giving is kind of like that. It's not in terms of need, and it's not in terms of ability. It's in terms of what they think is appropriate. Now there are other people who give to the church, and we could call them dues payers. Now the dues payer is the person who believes you should

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simply take the amount of money it costs to run the church, and divide it equally amongst all the members. And everybody pays their share, and that takes care of things. Which sounds very good, until you realize that that means that the person who has a great abundance of this world's goods, is only expected to give

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as much as the person who has very few. As the person, for example, who is on fixed income, Social Security, or something of that kind. There was a farmer once who was being interrogated by his minister. And the minister said, "Lamb, if you had ten cows, would you give one to God?" And he said, "Yes." "Lamb, if you

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had ten horses, would you give one to God?" "Yes." "Lamb, if you had ten pigs, would you give one to God?" "Yes." "Lamb, if you had ten chickens, would you give one to God?" "Just a minute, preacher," he said, "you know I've got ten chickens." Well, you see, there are a lot of people who are willing to talk about everybody

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else giving their share, but they draw back when it comes to what they personally are able to give in terms of what God has given to them. And that philosophy I call "dues-paying Christianity." And then there are those, and this is the third type, who believe in proportionate giving. And proportionate

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giving, perhaps based upon the biblical suggestion of 10 percent, I'm not going to argue that with you. There are those who say that it's legalistic to go back to that 10 percent. But laying that aside for the moment, the point is these individuals seek to give a percentage of what they earn, and they seek to

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increase that percentage as they go along. And that means that those who have more, give more. It might interest you to know that we have 12 families in this church who all give proportionately, and those 12 families give 15 percent of the total income of this church. That's what proportionate giving can do. And much of

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what we undertake in our ministry here is because of those who give proportionately, which is what the Bible suggests we ought to do. Paul says, "Let everyone lay by him in store as the Lord has prospered him." That is, as we receive, so we are to give. The first church I served, there was an older gentleman whose

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name was Sam, and he was a proportionate giver, a tither. He followed the biblical admonition of the tithe. And interestingly enough, whenever he received his check each month, he would bring his tithe to the church that very day. It didn't make any difference if it was raining or snowing. Regardless of the

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weather, he would come. And I said to him on one occasion, "Sam, you don't have to bring it that very day. I mean, bring it the next Sunday or send it in through the mail. It's not necessary for you to come down here in all this inclemency." He said, "Young fellow, I'm a lot closer to the end of my life than you are to yours,

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and I don't want to die with God's money in my pocket." Now there's a man who took his stewardship very seriously, and he gave proportionately. What is said to us by our money is that we are building and God is watching. He sees what we do with our money. Does it testify for us or does it testify against us? Now notice that

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under the pyramid there are some other words. There's the word "Novus Ordo Seclorum," which means "new order for the ages." In other words, we are to be engaged in bringing about that which is going to transform society and bring a new order, something that the world has never seen before, and that's the vision that we

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have here. I wish I had the time or the capacity and ability to articulate to you what we're doing and what we want to do. You take this building, for example. Do you know, and I sat down and figured it out this last week, that 2,298 people come into this building in an average week. Now it takes a lot of maintenance

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just to clean up a building when there's 2,298 people coming in at different times and for different reasons, and it might interest you to know that our insurance premiums on this building for next year have gone up twelve thousand six hundred dollars. That's just the insurance premium, up twelve thousand

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six hundred dollars. In some of our mission-giving, we do very well, but in our support of Presbyterian missions, this congregation is giving exactly the same amount now that it was giving 30 years ago. The same amount for 30 consecutive years, but of course the value of those dollars have been

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steadily declining. We want to move into television this next year because Pittsburgh, America's most livable city, is the only city that I know of in this country of its size which does not have a single mainline congregation making its worship services available to the people of the city via television each

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Sunday. Oh yes, you can tune in a congregation in Southern California or you can tune in a congregation on a mountaintop in Virginia, but no congregation that is dealing with the problems, the blessings, and the difficulties of living right in this place. And please don't think that what

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we do not give ourselves we can receive from our endowment monies. We do have an endowment and we can thank God for that, but we use all of the income from that endowment and in fact for the last 14 consecutive years we have used each year part of the principle of that endowment. We have been eating our seed corn. Our

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ancestors did not do that, but we are doing that. If we listen to this one dollar bill, if we listen to what the image and superscription thereon say, they say to us that we are to be building a new order for the ages and we want to build out in the world and here in our own community and to make this

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place a center for the things of Christ in this city. But all of those things cannot be accomplished if we keep giving the same gifts, the same amount of money even though the value of that money steadily declines. Now of course in the center of the bill, right above the word "one" are the most obvious words of all.

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"In God we trust." That's the most prominent Christian word on the bill and what that says to us is that no matter how much we give to God or the building of his kingdom, we cannot repay our debt to God and must trust in his grace. I mean we can't pay for the world. If we put all of our resources together we

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couldn't buy a sunset. We cannot pay for our nation and the gift of freedom that we have. We cannot pay for this church. There's no one of us here who could rebuild this building if it were to fall down. You cannot pay for 200 years of history that have made this fellowship what it is. You couldn't hire all the

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people who teach in the church school and all the people who sing in the choir. We couldn't reimburse the pilgrims who brought the faith to these shores. Which one of us could write a check to pay off Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or Luther or Calvin or Knox or Paul or Barnabas or Silas or Peter? Which one of us could

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stand at the foot of the cross and offer anything up to Jesus at all and say, "Okay we're even." Nothing you can put on a pledge card can do that. We live off the grace of God. It's in God that we trust. So Jesus said, "Look at your money. Whose image and inscription is there on? Our

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money calls us to be disciplined disciples. It reminds us that everything is God's gift. It calls us to rejoice in God's blessing. It tells us to be building a new order and to remember that God is watching as we do so. And it finally calls us to trust in God's grace." That's what our money is saying to us

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today. Christ is not bound by centuries and as the money spoke for him then, so our money that we handle every day of our lives speaks to us of the things of Christ. Legal tender, this is the way it tenderly speaks to us of the things of God. So two men went out on the every member canvas for their church and they

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came to a home and knocked on the door and the man said, "I'm not going to give anything because religion is becoming too expensive a proposition." And one of the men said, "You know, about a year and a half after my wife and I got married, we decided to try to have a baby and we did. God gifted us with a son. That's an

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expensive proposition to have a baby." Then of course there were all the clothes and the medical bills and all the things bringing him up, raising a child, an expensive proposition. And I wanted him to have a dog. We had a boy child and I think every boy should have a dog so we bought him a dog and of course you have

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to feed the dog and take care of the dog and that was an expensive proposition. And then, well it was a bicycle and those are not cheap by any means and all the other toys and accoutrements of teenage life. Finally he graduated from high school. We gave him a car. Now I know that sounds like laying it on pretty

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thick but it wasn't a new car. The car was ten years old. I checked it to make sure it was in good condition. Even a ten-year-old car is an expensive proposition. Then he went off to college and that's really an expensive proposition. It was halfway during his junior year on a Friday night that I got

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a call from the president of his college telling me that my son, my expensive proposition, had been killed in a freak campus accident. And you know, he said, looking at the man who was unwilling to give because religion's an expensive proposition, you know, ever since the night my son died, he has not cost me one

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red cent. Yes, there are some things that cost a lot. All we are and all we have. But think of the cost of being without them. To be without a kingdom. To be without a king. Let us pray. Oh God our Father, make us thankful for all of your blessings new every morning

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and fresh every evening. Remind us that we are always the guests of the divine. Teach us to be good stewards of that which we possess and fill us with a spirit of joy that we might give of our time and our talents and our treasure, not grudgingly, but cheerfully, as becomes those who are the children of

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the King and therefore members of the kingdom. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [ Music ]