Imagine the scene. Jesus has just had a rather tense confrontation with some of the religious leaders. He heads to the Temple with his disciples. They sit down near where the offerings were received.
The offerings were received in a different manner than we are used to. They had 13 offering boxes. Each of them was shaped like a trumpet. Each one had a different purpose. There was a box for contributions to the building fund. One was for the priests’ salary. One was for helping the poor. For whatever purpose, there existed a box for the offering.
When each individual went up to put their tithe and offering into the box they would announce the amount of the gift and what purpose it was for. They might say, “$500 for the building fund, and $200 for the hunger relief fund.” That’s where we pick up the passage today. Turn with me to Mark 12.
Read Mark 12:41-44.
This passage teaches us how much God really wants from us. This goes beyond money. The main example in this passage is money, but it extends into all aspects of our life. This relates to time, abilities, responsibilities, and money. The principles taught in this passage include all aspects of our life as it relates to our service for God.
It seems kind of preposterous that Jesus would say, “This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.” That seems crazy to say something like that. When we consider that in the original language what he really said was that in that one act of giving, the widow gave more than all the other people gave combined throughout their lives. Two measly copper coins worth less than one cent are said to be more than thousands of dollars. How can that be? That much money wouldn’t buy anything. What can you buy for a penny? I remember when I was a kid that some places still had penny gumball machines, but I haven’t seen one of those in years.
To fully understand and appreciate what Jesus meant, we have to realign our thinking a little. We are so enamored in our society with the size of wealth. Fortune magazine and Forbes publish lists of the wealthiest companies and individuals. We hear reports of the obscenely large salaries of professional athletes. We hear about the great generosity of people who give thousands of dollars to charity. The bigger the gift the better, but that is not how Jesus was looking at it as these events unfolded.
The first principle learned from this passage is that…
I. Real giving must be SACRIFICIAL.
During his recent gubernatorial campaign in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger was criticized for some apparent anti-Semitic comments. In his defense, it was noted that he gave $1 million to the Simon Wiesenthal Center that remembers the Holocaust and seeks to avoid something similar in the future. Arnold was praised for his generous spirit in giving the $1 million. He was recently paid $30 million for his role in this summer’s movie Terminator 3. Add that $30 million to all the money he has made from his movie roles over that last quarter century and that’s a bunch of money. While it’s great that Arnold made that kind of contribution to such a worth cause, it really was no sacrifice for him. To us, $1 million is a lot, but to Arnold it is pocket change. Giving $1 million was something that was comfortable for Arnold.
What Jesus was trying to teach his disciples here, and us, is that real giving must have an element of sacrifice. The truth is that…
A. The AMOUNT of the gift does not matter.
While the Bible doesn’t tell us how much the others put in the offering box, it does say that the gave “large sums.” That would lead us to believe that they were contributions that to the average citizen would be a lot of money. Similar to Arnold’s contribution of $1 million, which looks so big to us, these contributions were sizeable. Remember Jesus was a carpenter, and many of his disciples were fishermen. They would not have been accustomed to having large sums of money.
These individuals were probably rather proud of their sizeable contributions to the Temple. With great pride they probably tried to outdo each other. They impressed each other with great big gifts. The priests were probably also very impressed by the great gifts. They were thinking of all the good that they could do with these most generous contributions. There was one individual who was not impressed with the large contributions. Jesus was not the least bit impressed by these huge contributions. He noted, “For they all contributed out of their abundance.” This was money that they would not miss. They would certainly have enough money to buy food and clothes. They also had plenty left over for the luxuries of life. They gave vast amounts of cash, but it was no sacrifice for them at all.
God doesn’t look at the amount given he considers that…
B. The SACRIFICE of the gifts matters.
Standing in sharp contrast to the wealthy folks who piled the money in the offering box stands a poor widow who has two virtually worthless copper coins to put in the offering. The word poor here literally means someone with few resources. This widow had nothing. At that time in history, being a widow usually meant that you were destitute, living at the mercy of someone else who may or may not help you out. There were no life insurance policies to take care of someone after a death. The widow was left to make money and provide food anyway she could.
The Bible doesn’t tell us how she obtained these two copper coins. Perhaps some kind person had pity on her and gave them to her. Perhaps she sold something she had made. Perhaps she found them on the side of the road. It doesn’t really matter how she got them. The fact is that she gave everything she had. Jesus said of this widow’s gift, “She out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” The abundance of the rich folk means their excess. The poverty of the widow means her lack. She had next to nothing, and she gave every bit of it.
Again we are confronted with a truth here. The sacrifice is what matters in our gift to God. As we look in the mirror, we must ask ourselves, “Is my giving truly sacrificial?” We sacrifice for a new car or house that won’t last forever, but we just can’t bring ourselves to sacrifice for the eternal Kingdom of God.
The next truth is that…
II. Real giving has a certain RECKLESSNESS in it.
Who would begrudge the women keeping one of the coins? She would still have something, albeit not much. She would still have given half of all that she had. Half was still more proportionally than what the others gave. It’s not likely that the others gave half of all their wealth.
The widow displayed a certain recklessness with her gift. She gave all that she had. There was nothing left to buy food. She displayed ultimate faith. She displayed a faith that is rare in our culture. I doubt that many American Christians have this type of faith. She gave every bit of what she owned to God. She gave her savings, retirement plan, rainy day fund, or whatever you want to call it. She gave it all to God. She was relying on God to supply her needs. So often we rely on ourselves to supply our needs.
A. Too often, we play it SAFE.
We play it save when we give to God with the attitude, “I’ll give this amount, but I’ll hold a little back just in case God doesn’t come through for me.” We hedge our bets just in case God drops the ball.
This applies to more than money. It applies to our service for God. We play it safe. We want to stay in our comfort zone. We don’t really believe that God will help us. We believe God to be powerless when we don’t rely on him.
We get comfortable in our little corner doing what we’ve always done or giving what we’ve always given. We don’t take a step of faith.
The truth is that we believe that we can manage our affairs better than God can. We don’t believe that God can navigate us through life as well as we can.
It would be like being on an airplane and trying to take the controls over from the pilot. Many people don’t like to fly simply because they can’t control the situation. All of the statistics agree, air travel is safer than driving a car. More people are killed in car accidents each year than are killed in airplane accidents. The fact is that many people don’t like to fly because they aren’t in control. It would be ridiculous for me to try to take the controls from the pilot. I have no idea how to fly an airplane. I would be in control, but I would be in control of airplane that would soon be making a rapid descent to the ground. We like to play life safe. We like to drive our own cars. We want control. We want to be in charge of the situation. We want to set the agenda. We want to be in the driver’s seat.
That is nothing more than sinful nature shining through. I refer you Genesis 3:4 and 5. In the Garden of Eden, Satan in the form of a serpent confronts Eve. Verses 4 and 5 say, “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God know that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” God had told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree, but Satan said that if they ate of it they would be in control. He said that they would “be like God.” They would be in the driver’s seat. The problem is that God wants to be in the driver’s seat of our life. As a result of that we must get out of the driver’s seat, and…
B. We must make the final SURRENDER.
We have to get out of the way and allow God to have control of our lives. The truth is that our giving to God is not a financial issue; it’s a spiritual issue. It’s a matter of complete surrender to God. It seems like so often we find some way to keep things from God.
I have often heard the analogy of the Christian life to a house. When we invite Jesus into our life, we allow him to come into the living room, but we keep all the others doors to the other rooms locked. Eventually we unlock a door here and there for him enter. We surrender different aspects of our life. There always seems like we are holding some part of our life back from God.
God wants complete control of our life, and that means that we have to completely surrender our life to him. God doesn’t want our commitment so long as it’s comfortable for us. He wants complete control. That isn’t a comfortable proposition. Jesus never promised a comfortable life for his followers. In fact Jesus said it would be difficult. He said that the world would hate his followers the way it hated him. He said that we have to take up our cross and follow him.
Surrender is never easy. It involves giving up control of lives to God. God wants complete control of life. That means finances, personal life, and everything that is involved in our lives.
The third thing we learn from this passage is that…
III. Real giving must be GENEROUS.
We see in our passage that the widow was generous. Again, it comes down the amount of sacrifice that is involved in the gift. Generosity is not measured by the size of the gift but by the motive and sacrifice behind the gift. Our giving must not be grudging. We shouldn’t says, “Well, I guess I gotta put my offering in.” It’s something we shouldn’t moan and groan about. The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”
I can see the poor widow with a smile on her face, as she drops her two coins into the offering box. It meant the world to her that she was doing all she could to help advance the Kingdom of God. I can see the others giving with a great deal of reluctance. They may have thought, “Since I gave all this money, I’m going to have to wait another month to get that big screen TV.”
It is interesting that Jesus would hold up this poor widow as the example of generosity. I think it offers us a measure of comfort.
A. We may feel we do not have MUCH.
We may look at the wealthy that give large sums of money to charities and think, “Well, I’ll never be able to match that kind of contribution.” We’re left to think about what we would do if we had large sums of money. We think, “I would give some to the kids’ school, the Red Cross, the church, my alma mater” and the list goes on. We are stuck thinking that we can’t do anything because we don’t have much.
We may think that since we aren’t a large church we can’t do anything. A few weeks ago we took an offering for missions. It goes to building churches, schools, and pastor’s housing in areas of the world that can’t afford it. We gave $72 to that offering. We might be tempted to say, “$72 won’t go very far in building anything.” While that may be true, we contributed to the larger fund. We could look at like you need to add a lot to the $72 to build anything. I prefer to look at this way, that $72 may be the difference needed to build a building somewhere. Perhaps they were $72 short of buying all the supplies for a particular building.
We may be tempted to say that our talents or money don’t amount to much, but have to realize that we are a part of something that is larger than anyone of us individually. We are part of something that is larger than this local church. We are a part of the Body of Christ.
Jesus didn’t commend anyone for giving large sums of money; he commended the widow for being faithful and relying on God to meet her needs. The widow’s two copper coins weren’t much from the standpoint of the balance sheet, but they were huge from the standpoint of God’s balance sheet.
B. If we give what we have, God can do great THINGS.
When we give what we have, and commit it all to God, great things happen. There is the old hymn that goes, “Little is much when God is in it.” When we are contributing to something that is of God, no matter how much we give it will be multiplied for the benefit of God’s Kingdom.
All four Gospels tell of the event when Jesus fed a crowd of five thousand men, plus women and children, with fives loaves of bread and two small fish. A young boy who was excited about seeing Jesus came with his lunch of five loaves and two fish. When he realized the need of the people to eat, he approached one of Jesus’ disciples and offered his little lunch. How could we expect that meager lunch to make a dent in the hunger of thousands of people? If three people shared a loaf of bread and three people shared a fish that would feed a whole 21 people. Jesus honored the gift of that young boy. He multiplied what he gave and it fed a crowd of five thousand men plus the women and children. After everyone had their fill of fish and bread, the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of food that was left over. The leftovers were more than what the boy had given to begin with.
When we give our all to God, he multiplies it. It becomes bigger than what we had in the beginning. If we give what we have, God can do great things. God can do much more than we can imagine. The boy that day had no idea that his little lunch would be multiplied to feed a multitude.
Conclusion
We have seen through the account of the poor widow’s offering that real giving must be sacrificial. It involves a certain amount of recklessness. It also must be generous. God takes what we give, when we give it in complete reliance on him, and multiplies it more than we can imagine.
It all comes down to our surrender to God the control of every aspect of our life. If God is going to be in control of our lives, that means that he is going to be in control of every single aspect of our lives. We cannot allow ourselves to hold anything back from God.
If you would, bow your heads. Is God in complete control of every aspect of your life? If not, do you want him to be? If you want God to be in complete control of your life, signify it with an uplifted hand. No one is looking, only God.
