A More Perfect Kingdom

Preached on the Sunday of Independence Day weekend, this message opens Mark 12:13-17, where the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus with a question about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus flips the trap with a single question — whose image is on the coin? Caesar's image may be stamped on a piece of metal, but God's image is stamped on you, and your ultimate allegiance belongs to Him alone.

Pastor Mitchell traces what happens when the church hands the state what belongs only to God: the German Christians of 1930s Germany versus the costly faithfulness of Martin Niemöller and the Confessing Church, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeal to the higher moral law of God, and Clarence Jordan's Koinonia Farm and the Cotton Patch Gospel. A timely word on loving your country without making it your god — rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.