Luke 21:1-4

Discussion Questions

• In what ways have we been created to be givers, financially or otherwise?
• How does a life of non-giving lead to spiritual stagnancy?
• How is God’s economy of “littleness and greatness” different than the world’s values?
• How does sacrificial giving reflect God’s heart? What does it look like to give at a cost to our convenience?
• How can we simultaneously give cheerfully? Where does “duty meet delight”?
• Do you agree with J. I Packer that the measure of all love is its “giving”? Have you experienced that kind of love?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. Today is no different. If you’d like a paper copy to follow along with, just raise your hand, and someone will hand deliver it to your seat with a smile on their face. Back me up here, deliverers. Up on the screen, you’ll see all of the info if you want to follow along with your device. And as always, we love to welcome in folks who have joined us online. So good morning, friends. We’re so glad you’re with us. And in the last week, an all-American cast as it turns out, we’ve been joined by folks from Homestead, Florida; Reedsville, North Carolina; Kansas City, Kansas. Go Chiefs. Only after the Titans, of course. Go Titans, go Chiefs. Married into the family, let’s just say. And Columbus, Ohio. So, thank you for joining us, friends. We’re glad that you’re with us. This week, we’re continuing on in our study of The Gospel of Luke. And this week, we are in Chapter 21.

In our passage today, we find ourselves in Jerusalem, in the temple with Jesus and the disciples. It’s in the middle of Holy Week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday. We don’t know for sure because as fastidious as Luke was about providing live-body detail, he did not write down what days of the week Jesus was doing these things. But pretty good guess that it’s kind of the middle of the week. And we’re going to focus in on just the first four verses of Chapter 21 this morning. And I know right about now, some of your ears just like perked up. You’re getting a little giddy thinking, oh, four verses. Awesome. We’re going to get to Pancake Pantry before everybody else. I make no promises. Well, typically, this passage is called “The Widow’s Mite” or “The Widow’s Offering.” And I’m calling it, “Where Duty Meets Delight.” And a longer title might have read, “Where Duty Meets Delight: The Heart of Giving.” And right about now, some of you that were so excited and giddy a second ago, you’re starting to slide back down in your seats thinking, oh man, a whole sermon about giving. Well, okay, in a way, you’re right. The passage is about giving. The sermon is about giving, but not in the way you might expect.

Today is not giving Sunday. And today– I have some relief going on. Today’s not the announcement of a big new capital campaign. And I’ve got to say, Kristen and I have been members here almost 25 years. And I don’t believe we’ve ever had a picture up on the screen of a fundraising thermometer until today. Oh, look at that. I’m not quite sure what the goal is, but apparently, we’re about 30% of the way there. So good job, church. We’ve got a ways to go, but we’re making progress. And okay, man, I truly hope that’s not offensive to someone, because plenty of beautiful Bible-believing churches have used that kind of a thing as a visual aid for capital campaign plans. And that just has not been our DNA. And as we like to say, not better, just different. But we really are going to talk about the heart of giving today, which includes money, but by no means is it all about money. It’s about what we give to the Lord, what we give to each other, how we give the condition of our hearts when we give. But mostly, it’s about how the heart of giving reflects the heart of God, because it is the goodness of the God who delights in us. He delights in loving us extravagantly, and He’s given everything so that we could know Him more intimately and more truly.

Dane Ortland has a great take on this in his book, Gentle and Lowly. He says, “The Christian life, from one angle, is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is, over many decades, fall away, being slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who He is. The Christian life is a lifelong shedding of tepid thoughts of the goodness of God.” Amen. God is so good. And my prayer for us this morning is, as we study this text together to see if, in the midst of what we’re talking about, we can let go of some more of our lukewarm thoughts about how good God really is and open ourselves to Him just a little bit deeper. So, pray with me, church, and then we’ll read our text: God, You are good. The story of Jesus is the true story of Your love for us. And we need to be reminded of this story of the heart of giving every single day so that it enables us to understand how much You love us and to enable us to love as You would have us love, to give as You would have us give. Holy Spirit, I pray that You would open our eyes, ears, hearts and minds. Illuminate this text for us and draw us closer into You. We lift this up in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, so Luke 21, verse 1, “Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, ‘Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had to live on.'” Wow. So again, just a reminder, we don’t know for sure, but we think our passage today probably was Tuesday or Wednesday of Holy Week. And if you remember from what we’ve studied the last few weeks, Jesus has been teaching daily in the temple, and all of the religious leaders  wanted to— this was actual words used in chapter or so ago— they wanted to destroy Him. But they were unable to lay hands on Him. They were unable to out with Him. And at the end of last week’s passage, if you remember, Jesus was extremely critical of the scribes. He said in front of everyone in the temple, “Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogue and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widow’s houses.” What a contrast. “And for pretense, make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Well, in our passage today, we are going to see a contrast between the way the world looks at giving and the way that Heaven looks at giving. And we’ll see this contrast between the condemnation of the scribes and the commendation of this poor widow. Jesus is just excoriating the scribes at the end of Chapter 20. He’s condemning them for their showboat religion, just showing up to get accolades and glory, give for what they can get out of it. It’s a false religion. In Texas terms, they would be all hat and no cattle. Jesus looked up, verse 1 says, and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box. So, a little bit of an overview of Passover week. The population of Jerusalem in Jesus’ time, we don’t know for sure, ranges from on the low side estimates 25,000 to 30,000, top side 80,000 to 100,000. That’s the everyday population of Jerusalem. But during Passover week, the population would swell many times over. People would come from all over Israel, from other countries. And many of them would stay outside the city walls because there just wasn’t room for everyone in the city. Again, estimates would be on the low side a couple of hundred thousand people, top side maybe up to 3 million. So, the city was crowded.

And you can imagine noisy, dusty, all sorts of stuff going on. We’ll take all of that noise, take that over to the temple where Jesus is. The outer court of the temple, it’s called The Court of the Gentiles. It’s where visitors would go. The next court, the inner layer, the next court in would be called The Court of Women. And the offering box that we find in our passage today, those boxes were in The Court of Women. And there were 13 of these. They were called shofarot. And they were shaped like an inverted trumpet or horn. There was a big basin at the bottom and then kind of a fluted top. And then it opened up at the top. And you would put all of your coins in these offering boxes, I’ll call them, in the shofarot. And there were designated titles on where your offerings would go. Well, so if you remember, all of these people that are visiting, they would be coming to the temple to go to temple to make their offerings. And if you remember, there’s no online giving. There’s no paper currency. There’s no checks. It’s all coins. So, there would be this constant sound of coins being put into these metal shofarot. And because we read that Jesus sees the rich putting in coins, you can just imagine that there’s all of these people that have come to Passover, to Jerusalem for Passover week. Many of them wealthy, maybe some dignitaries, dressed to the nines in their fancy robes. Some of them so rich they’re bringing in bags of money. Maybe they’re so rich, they even have a servant with some kind of a cart. They’re coming in and loudly dumping in all of this money.

And you can imagine for regular people, there might be some oohs and ahs like, wow, did you hear that? That guy must be really rich to be putting in that much of an offering. And it’s kind of like going to your high school, like your 10-year reunion. You know that first big reunion where everybody is trying to top the next guy over about how great their life is and how much money they’re making? That’s what was going on here. And in the midst of that, in comes this poor widow, probably bent over, probably shuffling along, probably not wanting to gather any attention towards herself. And she walks up, and she puts these two little copper coins in one of the shofarot. Probably so thin they didn’t even make a sound when they fell to the bottom. So, we’ve got a slide with a picture of these coins. They’re called lepton. Lepton is singular; lepta is plural. And they’re the smallest coins that were made and used. Two of them together equaled about 1/64 of a denarius, which was a day’s wage for a laborer. And in modern day terms, for us, two lepta would be about 1/4 of a penny. So just an extremely small monetary amount. Well, this woman, she would be three times an outcast in Jewish society. She was a woman, first of all. She was a widow, and she was poor, extremely destitute. She’d be way out on the margins of Jewish society. Yet we know that God has such a heart for people like her, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the immigrant, the sojourner— everybody who is outcast and pushed out to the edge of society. God has a heart for her.

With all of the money coming into the temple, her offering would have been so insignificant. But yet for her, it was all she had. She was giving of herself extravagantly to God. And here’s something that should not escape our notice. She was a widow. So, at some point, her husband had been taken from her. Her love, her sole means of support. And yet she has not abandoned God. She’s not abandoned her faith. What does she do? She comes to the temple. She doesn’t know Jesus is there. She might not even know who He is. But He sees her, this invisible woman. And she comes to the temple to worship God. And she gives everything that she has materially to say thanks to God. And how does Jesus respond to what He sees, the rich and this poor widow? He uses this as a teaching moment for His disciples. And He says, this woman, this poor widow, she has put in more than all of them. Her offering, as meager as it was, was worth more in the eyes of Heaven than all that the others offered, because they gave what they would never miss. And she gave what she could never afford. Jesus saw all of that. Well, what can we take away from this text? You might get to Pancake Pantry early yet. I don’t know. What can we take away from this text that might inform how we live our lives? This heart of giving.

Well, the first point is we are created to be givers, aren’t we? We can’t escape it. Just like we need oxygen, air, food and water, there’s no getting around it. We can’t get away from the fact that we have been created as givers. From the very beginning of Genesis, we’re told that God is the creator of everything. He’s given us all of creation, given us life, given us all we need. He’s the ultimate giver. And as image-bearers of God, we’re created to give. Part of the rhythm of giving is giving and receiving. We receive from God. We receive from other people. Then we pass that along and give to others. But we need to give. Because if we don’t, it looks like when we’re driving around kind of out in the country here and you see ponds that are stagnant, that are overgrown with algae and scum. And that means a couple of things. That means the pond is not getting any fresh water in, and there’s not any water going out. So, the water is not circulating. It’s just staying still. The temperature of the water heats up, and it creates this environment for the overgrowth of algae and pond scum. The pond becomes stagnant. And that’s what happens to us as well when we don’t receive from the Lord, allow that to circulate in our lives, giving us oxygen, giving us life, and then give to others and pass what we’ve received on. When we don’t do that, we become stagnant, like the Dead Sea.

And since the fall, sin has corrupted everything, including our sense of giving. So, what was originally intended to be, like I said, a pass-through to be given to others, we find that that’s kind of turned inward to where we just want to get. And we don’t give to others. It’s distorted the original design. Again, it makes us stagnant. We live in a world that’s all about bigger, better, faster, richer, stronger, don’t we? The economy of the world is all about getting, and the economy of Heaven is all about giving. God doesn’t measure us by our bank account. Your stuff doesn’t make you more valuable to God. But conversely, your lack of stuff doesn’t make you less valuable to God. God does not look down on the needy. God measures this by the value He has already placed on us. J.C. Ryle says it this way in his Luke commentary: “He [God] measures littleness and greatness by a very different measure from the measure of man.” I was thinking last night about the hymn of Keith and Kristen Getty that we sing frequently here at TVC. “My worth is not in what I own, not in the strength of flesh and bone.” And it goes on later to say, “I will not boast in wealth or might or human wisdom’s fleeting light, but I will boast in knowing Christ at the cross.” That is where our worth comes from.

Our giving hearts are the external mark of something that’s happening internally. We talk about the same idea in our baptism celebrations. You know that getting baptized doesn’t save us. Baptism is a public statement in front of God and witnesses about things that have already transpired in our hearts. And in the same way, when we have generosity of spirit, when we give to other people not only money, but when we give of ourselves, our time, our gifts, our hearts, we are reflecting what’s already happened on the inside of our hearts. David Jackman and William Phillip talk about this in their commentary Teaching Matthew. “Faith must reveal itself in works, and such works are the fruit, the evidence, of a true faith…. The works are the mark, externally, of the inner reality of faith.” So, friends, all that we have comes from God. It ultimately belongs to Him anyway. But the picture of us being generous and giving, which is delightful to God, think about this. It’s a picture of us being generous and giving with things that we’ve just borrowed from God, because He’s given us everything anyway.

And it’s just like this beautiful aspect of being a parent. When your young kids ask to borrow money so they can buy you a gift and you just chuckle, because you see the love in their hearts to want to do something for you. They don’t have the means to do it, so they borrow money from you to give you a gift. And that’s what’s happening here. When we, with generous hearts and generosity of spirit, give out of all that God has given us, our giving is a living testimony to the truth of the Gospel. Well, the second point about the heart of giving is that God is delighted by a heart that gives sacrificially. Why is that? Why does it matter to God that we are giving out of our need, giving out of our poverty, rather than just giving out of abundance? And I believe that the first reason is that it reflects God’s own character. God loves sacrificial giving because it reflects His own heart to give everything. And when we give sacrificially, our gifts mean something. They’re not meaningless. There’s a great little story in the book of Second Samuel where King David has been praying to stop a plague. And the prophet, Gad, tells him to buy this specific threshing floor from a man so he can build an altar there, make an offering to God, and stop the plague. Well, the man, he wants to give his property— his threshing floor, all the wood, the animals. He wants to give all of this to King David. But David insists on paying the man for it. And this is what he says. He says, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.”

I hope that’s something that we can take in. Friends, do our offerings cost us anything? Or are we content to offer God that which is meaningless because it costs us so little that we don’t notice its absence? Not just money here. That means something to God. In our passage, I don’t think Jesus was being dismissive of the gifts that all the rich people were giving, but He knew that the gifts that they were giving meant virtually nothing to them. What they gave was such a small portion of their wealth that it had no effect on them. But the gift that the poor widow gave was everything she had. One commentary said that in terms of the monetary value of her gift and what it meant to the temple, it was utterly insignificant. And yet for her, it made her immeasurably poorer because she gave all that she had. C.S. Lewis has a really solid comment on this in Mere Christianity. He says, “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I’m afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare… There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.” What a beautiful gift that is to God. When we choose to say with our sacrificial giving, “I refuse to let X [whatever that is] be worth more to me in my life than my relationship with God, my relationship to others, or the well-being of others.”

And when we are generous in spirit and generous in giving in all ways, we show the world a love that insists on being noticed. Okay, this did not really happen. Here, this is just an illustration, a speculation. But imagine with me The Court of Women where all these people are giving, putting all these sacks of money into these 13 offering boxes, and the sound, the cacophony that it’s all making. In shuffles this poor widow woman, puts in these two copper coins, so small that, like I said earlier, they probably don’t even make a sound as they flutter down to the bottom of the offering box. Okay and then imagine with me in the middle of the court, there’s this very large set of scales. And then imagine that at one point, Jesus goes to all the offering boxes, collects all of the coins, and plops it all down this side of the scales. And you can just see the weight of the massive amount of coins. That scale is touching the floor. And He deftly reaches in and pulls out the two copper coins of the widow. Then he goes over here and puts them on this side of the scale, two little featherweight coins, and then all of a sudden you see the scales tip. And we realize that the value of those coins, because of the condition of her heart, from which she gave them, was worth more than all of the other money. Just imagine what the people would have thought if they had seen that. And surely Jesus, as He watched the widow put her money into the offering box, surely, He was thinking about the next few days and what He was going to do on the cross. What the widow did was amazing, no doubt about it. But Jesus is the true hero of the story. He’s the one that gave everything for all of us.

And J.I. Packer talks about this in Rediscovering Holiness. He says, “The measure of all love is its giving. The measure of the love of God is the cross of Christ, where the Father gave the Son to die so that the spiritually dead might have life.” Oh, that’s worth an amen, isn’t it? When we give sacrificially, we point to the God who loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever might believe in Him might have eternal life. Well, the third point about this heart of giving is that it brings us to this place where duty meets delight. As Malcolm Geith says in one of his poems in “David’s Crown,” he says, “Come to the place where every breath is praised.” That’s what we’re doing here. Where duty meets delight. So, I hate to break it to you all, but for those of us on staff in vocational ministry, it’s our job to like you. Awkward. It is. It’s our job to like you, to love you, to care for you, to minister to you. It’s our job. I hate to say it, but that’s our job. It’s what we do. So in that sense, it’s our duty, right? But I really hope you see where I’m going with this, because not only is it our duty, but it is such a delight, because it is such a joy and a delight for us to love you and serve you. It goes way beyond duty. And I believe that as we grow in Christ’s likeness, as we surrender more and more of ourselves to God, as we learn about the beauty and life to be found in sacrificial giving, the call of God to give of ourselves, oh man, it goes way beyond duty. And it just becomes a delight.

David Platt in Radical Together says, “We believe this story of Jesus. We believe the Gospel. For us, this means that sacrificial love is not just our duty, but our delight.” And church, I pray that we would see these two simultaneous truths that yes, there is— we don’t call it sacrificial giving for nothing. There is a real cost to giving sacrificially, a real cost in loving others first, but there’s also real joy to be found there, not just drudgery or duty. And in his book, Jesus the Great Philosopher, Jonathan Pennington says this so well, “The call to lay down narcissistic self-absorption and to serve others at a cost to our conveniences, finances, and luxuries is real. But this is never an appeal to abstract duty. It is an invitation to true happiness.” What a concept! Jesus sincerely desires for us to have abundant life and for our lives to flourish. We find true happiness as we give of ourselves. You may feel like you have meager things to offer. Right. Get it? So, here’s the thing. We’re called to give, to mobilize in our current circumstances, no matter what they are. Here’s another observation. If everything you have is God’s, we’ve already talked about how upside down the kingdom of this world is, how opposite it is to God’s kingdom. You know, the conversation of this world: “Hey, it takes money to make money. Go big or go home. Bigger is always better.”

And yet God’s kingdom is truly the right side up. You may feel like you have precious little to offer. You may feel like, oh, man, I just don’t have any money to give. Well, you know what? It’s not all about money. It’s about giving. That’s what it is about. It’s about giving money, sure. But it’s also giving talents, gifts, skills, time, no matter what your circumstance. God wants to work through you. The best ability, it turns out, is availability. No matter where we are in our life, young or old, sick or ill, rich or poor, God can use you. God wants to use you. And He will use you right where you are. Speaking in football terms, you might feel like, “Matt, got to tell you, bro, I feel like in my life, I’ve just reached the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter. I’m down 58 to nothing. There’s not much gas left in the tank.” But you know what? Do you know how precious those last two minutes of the fourth quarter of your life are to God? Just like the poor widow that gave those last two copper coins, God wants to use you right where you are. I know many of us knew TVCer Edgar Arnold. And I can’t stop talking about him because a number of years ago, he’s passed in the last year, so a number of years ago, he had a stroke, and he ended up living out at NHC. And he spent the last years of his life there. But man, he was so faithful and was used mightily by God for all the time he was there. He led a Bible study, went to another Bible study. He witnessed to the Lord right where he was so faithful.

And it’s such a testimony to the watching world when we as believers give in unexpected, generous ways, especially when we give out of our need and our poverty and out of circumstance, just like the widow giving her two last copper coins. Use what you have, and it will be so precious and beautiful to the Lord. Give your life to God. He has flung his arms out wide on the cross for us. Let’s fling our arms out wide and open our arms to Him. And I’ll finish with one more illustration and a quote. I’m sure many of us have heard this illustration, this picture of Heaven and hell. They say hell is a picture of people seated across from one another at this long table where there is this bountiful feast on the table. But all of the utensils are about two, three feet long. So, the people at this table are emaciated because they cannot find a way to feed themselves. Picture of Heaven, almost a carbon copy of this banquet room, this long table, people seated across from each other, sumptuous feast, same issue, the serving utensils are all a couple of three feet long. But these people are having the time of their lives because they’re feeding each other across the table. That’s what heaven is like, giving to each other.

So, I’ll close with this last quote by Rowan Williams. He’s got this really amazing book, Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life. And this is what I believe that we are being called to. He says, “Being disciples means being called to see others, and especially others in profound need, from the perspective of an eternal and unflinching, unalterable love.” Friends, I encourage, exhort us, to respond to that call that Jesus has on our lives. Amen, Let’s pray: God, You are good. Thank You for giving everything for us. Thank You for calling us to reflect You in the way we give sacrificially. I pray that, Holy Spirit, that You would empower us to take steps to give our lives to Jesus more and more and more and to learn about the delight of giving to others, especially sacrificially, Lord. Help us get a glimpse of the true joy that comes in giving ourselves away. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“Anchor Of Hope“ by Brown Bannister and Ellie Holcomb
“May The Peoples Praise You“ by David Zimmer, Ed Cash, Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, and Stuart Townend
“Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me“ by Jonny Robinson, Michael Farren, and Rich Thompson
“Give Me Jesus“ by Fernando Ortega
“Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois
All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: Steady Dependance

ALL: Compose our spirits to a quiet and steady dependence on your good providence, that we may not be anxious for anything, but by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, still make known our requests to you, our God. Help us to pray always and not faint; in everything to give thanks, and offer up the sacrifice of praise continually; to rejoice in hope of your glory; to possess our souls in patience; and to learn in whatsoever state we are, there to be content. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen!

Source: John Wesley (edited)

Classic Prayer: Basil the Great

Help us to hold fast, Lord, to the rudder of life. Guide our eyes away from the furious waves of lust. Guide our ears and tongues, lest the one receive anything harmful, or the other speak what should never be said. Do not let the tempest of passion overwhelm us, or the blows of depression beat us down, or the weight of sorrow drown us in its depths. Our feelings are waves. Help us to rise above them, steering a safe course through life. Otherwise, with life’s dangers all around, our boats could tip and sink in the deep sea of sin. As long as we live, and amid the unstable circumstances of this world, Spirit, help and show us the way onward. Move us on by gentle winds of peace, until we one day arrive safe and sound at the calm and waveless haven of God, to whom be glory and majesty forever and ever.

Confession of Faith: The Apostles’ Creed, “I Believe in the Holy Spirit”

LEADER: How does the Holy Spirit strengthen you for life in Christ?
PEOPLE: The Holy Spirit bears witness that I am a child of God, stirs my heart continually to worship and to pray, and inspires me to holiness and good works in Christ.

LEADER: How do you receive the Holy Spirit?
PEOPLE: The Scriptures teach that, by repenting and being baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ, I am forgiven my sins and I receive the Holy Spirit, who gives me new birth in Christ and frees me from
the power of sin.

LEADER: What is the fruit of the Holy Spirit?
PEOPLE: The fruit of the Holy Spirit is the very character of Jesus developing in us through the work of the Holy Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Source: ACNA, Q. 87, 88, 89; The Apostles’ Creed – I Believe in the Holy Spirit, part 2, Article III.

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