Luke 21:1-4
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of God’s word to Luke’s gospel. We are today in
chapter 21 verses one through four. And let’s ask for God’s help
and blessing. Lord, you have been so good to us. Do great
things for us now by your word and spirit. Let us see and hear
and believe and understand and put into practice these things
in our lives for your glory and our everlasting good. Amen, we
pray. Hear the word of the living God.
This is Luke chapter 21, beginning at verse one. Jesus looked up
and he 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 she
had to live on. The word of the living God, you
may be seated. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how
much we pay for entertainment? I don’t know what a movie ticket
costs these days, maybe 13, 14 bucks. I know when you go to
the popcorn stand, your Pepsi and your Skittles and your popcorn,
you’re out probably 30 bucks with a movie ticket. Why not
people watch? It’s the same thing, isn’t it?
And it’s free. And you can sneak in your own snacks, uh, to that
viewing. Uh, people watching. That’s a,
that’s a interesting, uh, interesting study in social, economic, psychological,
whatever category, it beats afternoon television and you get a front
row seat. You know the seats at the mall out on the aisle
way? Sit there for an afternoon, maybe an hour and people watch.
Next time you’re in the airport while you’re waiting for TSA
and the gate to open, the boarding on the plane, sit And people
watch. Next time you are waiting on
your spouse outside a shopping store, maybe in the grocery store
parking lot, you’ve got time to kill, don’t stare at your
phone. People watch. You’ll see all
kinds of things. People watching is often people
reading. And that’s what we find Jesus
doing in the temple. Jesus is in the temple treasury. It’s often also called the women’s
court. And in this temple treasury,
Jesus observes people making their offerings. And then he
makes an assessment of what he sees. He sees the rich giving
out of their abundance and this poor widow who is impoverished,
giving all that she had to live on. This little vignette, this
story, though, is couched in a grander context. It’s, of course, in the whole
Bible. It’s, of course, in the New Testament. It’s in Luke’s
orderly account to Theophilus, Luke and Acts, the life of Jesus,
the life of the apostles and the early church. But it’s also
in Holy Week. It’s in the week of Jesus’ life,
his passion, his death and his resurrection. Just for a little
thought, remember here all that is taking place. Maybe on Saturday,
Jesus was getting towards Jericho. That’s where he met blind Bartimaeus.
Son of David, have mercy on me. Jesus gives him his sight. He
follows Christ. Zacchaeus, the wee little man,
climbed up in the sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.
Zacchaeus, you come down. I must come and stay at your
house today. Salvation comes. Zacchaeus, a new man, makes restitution
with all those who he has defrauded. Jesus makes his way into Jerusalem. Sunday morning, the triumphal
entry. The people don’t recognize him.
And then there’s the encounters, the showdowns with the scribes.
the Pharisees, the teachers of the law and others, and Jesus
silences them. And as we’re marching towards
Thursday, Passover, as we’re marching towards Thursday, the
Lord’s Supper. And Judas, betrayal of Jesus,
the arrest by the Sanhedrin, the trial by the Jewish authorities,
the Roman authorities, the crucifixion of the Lord, his death and all
the cosmic events of Good Friday. We have Jesus sitting in the
temple, people watching. He’s in the temple treasury observing
all these events. And remember, there are probably
two things most pressing on his mind and in his heart. And those
two pressing things are the poor spiritual condition of Israel.
Remember, he’s wept over Jerusalem. But also, don’t you know the
events of redemption? The prophecy being fulfilled
that he will be the suffering servant. who will be wounded
and bruised and chastised for our iniquities and by his stripes,
which will come at a great cost to his body and his soul, we
will be healed. And so as we think of this great
context, I want us to consider two big headings from this passage. First, Jesus’ observation. Now Jesus is observing in a very
busy temple. And what do religious folk do
at a temple or at a church? Religious folk do religious things.
And why do religious folks do religious things? Why are churches
busy? Why are temples busy? It’s because we all have to do
something with our guilt. Guilt makes us religious. Well, if it doesn’t drive us
into despair, it makes us religious. And we figure out things that
we can do that we think in our minds and in our hearts and in
our lives make God happy with us. And so busy people are in
a busy temple. Religious folk are doing religious
things because they are guilty. And so there’s lots of buying.
There’s lots of selling. There’s lots of offering and
praying and talking and Here in Jesus’ little story here,
we see giving. We see giving, which Jesus has
in other places said is the easiest thing that you can do in the
life of a believer. It’s so much more easy. It’s
so much easier, isn’t it, to put money in an offering plate
than it is to suffer. It’s easier to drop money in
a collection box than it is to be mocked and ridiculed for your
Christian faith. If all of us could say, I will
write a check, I will put a wad of cash in the plate only not
to have sanctified suffering and persecution. We might think
about it until we remember it’s in God’s providence. And it’s
his fatherly care for us that puts us through these hardships. But religious people do religious
things. They’re busy, busy, busy in the temple in front of Jesus. And he watches the collection
plate as it were. Now in this room, this treasury,
there are 13 receptacles. There are six which are for free
will offerings and then the other seven are for specific things.
The first one is for the gymnasium so that you can have a youth
group. That’s a joke. It’s for wood. Another for frankincense. Another is for the upkeep of
the temple. The gold plated vessels need
to be redone at time. You ladies who keep silver for
your twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas, you know how it
is to keep up the silver. It has to be polished. Sometimes
it has to be sent off. Well, the same for the temple. And so on and on, these other
seven receptacles were there. And so when a person went to
make their offering, as they put their coins in, remember,
no paper money, no swiping, no PayPal, no e-checks. They had to drop real coins.
And so they clanked and they tinkled as they went into these
collection boxes. But as they deposited their coins,
they would say to the priest, It is for thus and so. And so you can imagine Jesus
needing to get away from the pressure of the Pharisees, the
Sadducees, the scribes and the teachers of the law. They’ve
been dogging him to undermine his authority. They’ve been dogging
him to trip him in his words and to have him say something
that would be unbiblical and ungodly. And therefore they would
be able to catch him and put him on trial for something. because
they were seeking to put him to death. And so Jesus with his
disciples is away from this pressure for a few moments. And it’s as
if he has his hands and his heads just weary from ministry. And
when this poor widowed woman who has nothing makes her offering,
it stands in great contrast from the giving of all those who are
rich. Now, it’s interesting at this
moment in time, Jesus is taking a breather. These scribes, Pharisees,
teachers of the law have been after him. And we can assume
that they’ve run off to have some committee meetings. Jesus has rendered them speechless.
And so they have about 24 hours to figure out what they’re going
to do. And we know from that 24 hours that they somehow got
up with Judas and Judas says, the one I kiss. That’s the one
you should arrest. And they offer him the 30 pieces
of silver and the rest is history. So they’re off having their committee
meetings on how to kill Jesus. And here’s Jesus in the temple,
in the treasury for a few moments. He’s seeking some rest and he
sees the wealthy and their loud clanks. And he sees their easy
donations into the temple treasury. You know how it is when you’re
prospering. And you go to Target and Walmart
and Harris Teeter, or one tank of gas is worn out and you need
another, and so what do we do? We just swipe. We just swipe. And I would imagine that most
of us, we’re good, we live on a budget. Most of us have enough
money in our budget to get through the month, but sometimes at the
end of the month, there’s more month and less money. And you’ve
stood in Walmart back to people watching. And you’ve been in
the line at Walmart and you’ve watched people very carefully
unload their cart. And they watch very carefully
as the cashier totals up their money. And maybe as you’ve watched
this, you’ve seen people pull a few things out because they
don’t have the privilege like we do of swiping. and there being
enough, whether it’s $10 over or $20 less than we thought.
You know the grocery experience. It’s expensive. It divests you
of nearly everything you have in your first trip of the month.
And don’t you stand there in the line and say, I see this
person and that person, and if I could, I would step in the
way and swipe for them. And that’s what Jesus is observing.
There are people that are just walking by the temple treasury
depositories, just swiping away, dropping their coins in with
loud clanks. And the passage says, these people
are well supplied. They lack nothing and they’re
able to put in their large sums and it doesn’t pinch, it doesn’t
hurt, it doesn’t stretch them. But then there’s this poor widow.
And as we remember from last week, the scribes who are so
wicked and need a public denunciation in the temple area by Jesus,
they devour widows’ houses. They treat widows as second class.
They believe that they are rejected by God because of their husband’s
death. And they’re easily exploited.
There’s no social security system in ancient Israel. And so the
scribes who love to be seen, who love to be addressed properly,
who love the best seats at the head of the table, they devour
widows’ houses. And Jesus now observes, after
he’s denounced them, he observes them just putting in the money
and the plate, while this poor woman, seeking a blessing, catch
this, she puts all that she had to live on in the temple treasury. Now, this is not a sermon about
tithing. This is not a sermon about how
much you ought to give. This is not a sermon about stewardship. This is not a sermon about church
budgets. This is not a sermon about all
the things we might expect. This is not gonna be the pastoral
shakedown, right? A preacher meddling in your checkbook. But I want you to understand
this. This woman is giving all she had to a temple system that
will soon be very obsolete. She is giving all that she has
to a temple system that makes a very few rich. and divest her
of all that she has. Think about at the time of the
Reformation when the Roman Catholic Church was trying to raise money
for St. Peter’s Basilica. And marketeers like Johannes
Tetzel went about the countryside with their stage plays of people’s
loved ones burning in hell because they did not receive a sufficient
offering to spring them from purgatory. And so Tetzel’s money
raising mantra was this, when into the coffer a coin doth ring,
a soul from purgatory doth spring. And so literally the church,
not only in Jesus time, in the time of the Reformation, and
I think it happens today, we are fleecing people, not we,
we are fleecing people out of their money. We do a good job
here. Every dollar is accounted for.
You can get a budget report next door. You can ask any question
you like. We strive to do a good job. We’ve got a good treasurer
and his wife. So when I say we, I’m not meaning
us. You get that, I’m sure. I was watching, well, I’ll tell
you what channel. You’ll figure out which channel
it was. Last night I turned it on because I was thinking about
all this. And it was the Fundraiser Thon. And these four men sat there
in their really fancy suits. And they were raising money.
$1,000, hallelujah. Another $1,000, hallelujah. And
then there was a $7 gift. And I thought, you know, it’s
going to take more in paperwork for that $7 gift to get acknowledged.
And then they’re going to get that poor person on the hook
for all their propaganda. And they’re going to spend more
than $7 in mailings and whatnot. But they took an extra special
moment to say, whoever gave that $7 gift, They’re giving all that
they had. They were exploiting, exploiting
people out of their money. And here’s why I can tell you
this to be true. They were saying, if you sow your seed, or say
it another way, give us money to buy our suits and our private
airplanes and whatnot, you will sow a seed of faith and it will
come back multifold. How many of y’all know people
who’ve sowed a seed and it never grew? How many of you know a
person who was so sick they went to see old Benny Hinn? Or they
went to one of these faith healers and they could not figure out
why the promises of these men was thus and so, but the cancer
remained. This is a similar situation that
Jesus is observing. This woman seeking a blessing
is giving all that she had to live on. She didn’t give one
coin, she gave two. And it was both of them. And
she gave it all to this sacrificial system, this way that would end
in a day or two with Jesus’ death and his resurrection. But this
was a corrupt system. This was not being upheld by
the Levitical laws. It was not being upheld in biblical
ways. But nevertheless, this woman
seeking a blessing puts in her two copper coins. And we’re told
these coins were shaved so thin they were an eighth of a penny.
They were shaved so thin that there was probably not a noise
from her voice to the priest that was audible because of her
poor condition. But these coins made no sound
as they made their way through the neck of the trumpet and into
the box. Yet this gift was not unnoticed. It was noticed by the Savior.
It was noticed. And this lesson to this day,
2000 years later, is being explained to us in our hearing. And so
this is Jesus observation. But let’s think for a moment
about his assessment. What do people do with their
guilt? Well, they get religious. They
get religious and they have some way or some system to please
the one who may think they have offended. And it’s why we live
in these. It’s why we live in these relationships
with each other, these relationships that are codependent. I want
so-and-so’s approval. And so I’ll do what it takes
to get their approval. I don’t want so-and-so to be angry with
me. And so I’ll do what it takes to make peace. And on and on
we can go. We live in all these codependent
relationships that would drive us crazy with legalism if we
were to try to keep them all and fulfill them. But we do the
same with God. And we walk in and we put our
money in the offering plate. We swipe our card and we say,
not too bad, sonny boy. I’ve done a pretty good job and
God ought to be very happy with me. But Jesus is the one observing
here and Jesus is the one who is going to make an assessment.
And we need to remember that we are measured by God’s standard. We are measured with his measuring
stick. I pumped a tank full of gas in
the car yesterday and there were no people to watch. So I had
to look at the gas pump. You know what’s in the corner
of the gas pump? It’s a stamp. And on the gas pump, it has a
date. And it’s when, I think, for the state of North Carolina,
the Department of Agriculture came and measured and tested
its weights and its volume. We don’t want to pump gas from
dishonest scales. If we pay for a gallon, by golly,
at $3.49 or $3.59 or whatever it is, we want a full gallon.
We don’t want 0.9, 0.7, 0.6, 0.5, 0.4. We would take 1.2,
I think. And hopefully come back and pay
for it. But we want a gallon. We pay for a gallon. We expect
a gallon. And that’s the way it is with
God. His measuring stick is always true. And so when Jesus sees
and he does. And when he assesses, and he
will, his judgment of you is supreme and final and fixed. And you can do all that you want
to get around his standard and say, that’s not fair. That’s
not biblical. That was 2000 years ago. This is a dusty old book.
It’s the 21st century. It’s 2021. Come on now, God,
get with the program. No, God sees and God judges. And his assessment is by his
measuring stick. Think of the biblical examples
of this. Israel wanted a king because Yahweh was not good enough.
And so what did Israel do? I heard this this week, it was
a good catchy way to put it. Israel picked a bozo from Benjamin
instead of a Jesus from Judah. They pick Saul. He was tall. He was handsome. He lettered
in high school football, right? He’s a politician. His teeth
were white. He had money in the bank because he made money in
the stock market. And on and on we could go with Americanized
accolades. They picked a bozo from Benjamin
instead of a Jesus from Judah. And so when Saul is rejected
after a train wreck of a kingship, Samuel is sent with his anointing
oil to the house of Jesse. Not him, not him, not him, not
him, not him. Aren’t there more boys? Well, yeah, it’s just David,
the little runt of the litter. He’s off keeping sheep. We’ll
bring him here. And as soon as he comes, that’s
the one. And he’s anointed. God looks
at the heart while man looks at the outward conditions, and
we can name all of our accolades. I’m good looking, I’m smart,
I swipe when I walk by the offering box. I do all these things for
sure, God must be wanting to give me an attaboy. Think of
another biblical example of God’s standard, not ours. In Isaiah,
the passages of the suffering servant, Jesus was nothing to
look at. Jesus was nothing to rave about. In fact, in the suffering servant
passage of Isaiah 53, it says very coldly, we esteemed him
not. And if you esteem not what God
judges to be the righteous standard, you will not find your place
in heaven. God sees, God assesses, God judges,
and it’s by his measuring stick. We say, I’ve done my duty. We
love to stand by the offering plate with that four foot check,
not the Ed McMahon one that says we’ve won the lottery, but we
love to let it be known I’ve given this to charity. I’ve done
my duty and I’ve done my duty better than you. Think about
this for a moment. If you have a widow that gives
all she had to live on and a wealthy person who says I gave $50,000
to the church, who do we esteem? We esteem him because $50,000
is a lot of money. What if he’s a gazillionaire?
He’s robbing the Lord, according to Malachi, right? But what about
the woman, the poor widow, impoverished? She’s given everything that she
had to live on. This is an important observation
that Jesus makes when he’s sitting in the temple treasury. It’s
such an important observation that when he When he gives his
assessment, he says to his disciples, come, this is something you ought
to see. They’ve been half asleep. You
need to look at this. And notice how Jesus puts it.
This gets a truly. This gets a, if you’re King James,
it gets a verily. Look in chapter 21. In verse
three, truly I tell you, Jesus says, this poor widow has just
put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out
of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she
had to live on. What does it say about this woman’s
faith? We hear of other places in the
Bible, for example, the widow of Zarephath, who Elisha came
and said, hey, I need to be fed. I need some bread. And she says,
well, I’m running out of oil. I’m running out of flour. I’m
running out of baking soda, self-rising flour. Can’t afford the gas bill
to run the stove. What does Elisha do? You just
keep making bread. And what happens? Her oil never
runs out. Her flour never runs out. The
gas bill for the stove gets paid. You begin to get the idea. This
is what a life of faith is like. We may be poor, we may be destitute,
and we may, because our faith requires it, give away both our
coins. But what do we believe? We believe
that God can provide. Oil will never run out. The shoes
on our feet in the wilderness will never break apart. The moths
will not eat our tunics. Jehovah Jireh will be our provider
and he will give us our daily bread. There’s a bigger thing
to think about, though, here. And it comes from our creed,
our confession of faith, guilt. I’m a sinner. Grace. God has
saved me in Christ. Gratitude. How do we show forth
our gratitude to God in this life? Well, we do it in many
ways. We worship him. We ascribe to
him the glory that is due his name. We give him thanks for
his goodness and his provision. We live a life of obedience.
We delight in his law and we delight to please our heavenly
father, whose child we now are by adoption through Jesus as
our bigger brother. And so we worship, we obey, but
we also give back to God. He is a debtor to no one. We
could never outgive God. He owns the cattle on a thousand
hills. He doesn’t need our dollars, our cents, our pennies or our
big four foot checks. He could do it all without us.
But nevertheless, what does he do? He sees fit to use us. In fact, when Christ ascended
on high, When he went back to heaven, he gave to the church
gifts. He gave apostles. He gave pastors
and teachers and elders and deacons. He gave Sunday school teachers.
He gave you with your ability to work and to give and contribute
to the labor of the church. And so there are many ways we
can give God our gratitude. But isn’t this front and center?
Isn’t this front and center? Because Jesus is on the way to
the cross. And he is observing a woman giving
everything. Out of her poverty, she’s giving
everything and it’s to make others rich. And that’s what Jesus will
be doing in a day or two. He who left the riches of heaven
became poor for our sakes in order that we might become rich. And so you think you give a lot,
but what does God think? of what you do for him. Pray
with me. Lord, by your word, by your spirit,
let each of us examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith.
Let each of us examine ourselves to see if we have dealt with
our guilt properly, not through the work of our hands or the
clanging of our gifts in a box, but may it be through faith in
Jesus, the perfect one, who died in our place, who’s given us
his righteousness, whose obedience is credited to our account. May
our lives be a holy sacrifice, a living sacrifice. May the incense
of our worship, the incense of our obedience, and the incense
of our giving of gifts and service to your people, may it be pleasing
in your sight. And may we examine ourselves
to see of our faith. to see if we are living in a
way that pleases you. Help us show us whether it be
painful or encouraging. Do the work of the seer and the
assessor in our own lives. This day we pray in the name
of Jesus. Amen. We want to respond to God’s word
by singing number 184. Lord, you love the cheerful giver
and we will stand to sing.