The Investment Principle Luke 21:1-4

Back in 2006, a very young man joined the staff at FBC Wetumpka. With wife and baby in tow, he got his first full time job and got ready to really enter adult life. I remember it well! As I got ready start here, I was setting up my payroll and got asked a question I wasn’t prepared for: how much do you want to put into retirement. Honestly, at that point in my life I didn’t understand much about the whole concept, so I reached out to my Dad for advice. I don’t remember all that he shared with me, but I do remember this piece of wisdom: “It will always feel like you can’t, but invest something and always be striving to do more”. I think that was pretty good wisdom for a retirement account, but I also think it’s pretty good wisdom for how we invest in the Kingdom!

-A serious Kingdom investment has a sacrificial earthly cost.

I. The Lord Sees What We Give vv. 1-2

In our passage this morning, Jesus is in the Temple, watching people as they go and make their contributions to the Temple treasury

Interestingly, He observes people who are living at the extremes of the spectrum. There are wealthy people who give a lot and a poor widow who is only able to give a little

However, there is an expectation that everyone will give something.

Jesus doesn’t stop the wealthy and tell them to give more and He doesn’t stop the poor and tell them to give less; He simply observes and celebrates where He sees sacrificial generosity take place.

I find that our nature is to make excuses in this area

We find lots of reasons why other people should be more generous while we excuse our own lack of generosity

I think there are questions we should ask ourselves!

Am I giving regularly?

Am I giving prayerfully?

Am I giving sacrificially?

Am I giving joyfully?

It may seem a little odd for Jesus to be watching people as they give, but our financial gifts are an indicator of our spiritual health

Our giving is an indication of our heart towards God: If we are grateful to God, we will reflect that with a generous spirit

Our giving is also a measure of our trust in God: if we believe that what we have is a gift from Him, we will be able to give it back to Him without fear

Our giving is also a great predictor of our spiritual trajectory: the more our finances are bound to things of God, the more our hearts will be pointed towards Him

I think that this is a question worth asking ourselves this morning: What does He see when He looks at me?

We live in the self-checkout era. Personally, I don’t love it at all! Seemingly, it’s an opportunity ripe for theft, but the stores understand us pretty well. Many of them have either a video system or mirrors positioned around the self-checkout area. Why? So that we remember that someone is watching. What does the someone who is watching observe when He looks at me?

II. The Lord Celebrates What We Give v. 3

Watching the widow, Jesus grabs the attention of those with Him and asks them to observe:

It turns out that in His way of looking at things, the smallest gift given was the greatest one of all

Not only does Jesus not despise her small gift, He celebrates it and uses it as a powerful example for others

This widow’s gift is noteworthy in the eyes of the Lord because it is an act of faithfulness

Understand, the Lord doesn’t need your money

His work is not going to be thwarted by my lack of generosity

However, I am going to miss out on the opportunity of having been part of it

She is returning the gift that she has received from the Lord as an investment in His Kingdom

I think that we all have to understand the reality of an investment for giving to make sense at all

When I give to the Lord I am entrusting Him to multiply my gifts in ways that I cannot imagine

He does not despise the small investment that she makes; He celebrates it

In the Gospels, we read the story of the feeding of the 5,000 and we are amazed at the ability of Jesus to feed the crowd with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. We are right to celebrate what Jesus did, but we must not forget the boy who gave up his lunch that day. Because one child gave all that he had into the hands of Jesus, a multitude of people were blessed. When he invested his gifts, he saw the Lord provide for his own needs while also meeting the needs of so many more people! While we do not know his name, none of us will forget his story.

III. The Lord Challenges What We Give v. 4

In closing His comments, Jesus makes a contrast between the great gifts of the rich and the small gift of the widow

He does not demean the gifts of the wealthy, but I do believe He challenges them

The gifts of the wealthy were made out of their abundance; the truth is that these were easy gifts because they didn’t really cost anything and that is no gift at all!

We see this in the life of King David, as he prepared to build an altar on the property of Araunah: “I will not give to the Lord that which costs me nothing.” 2 Samuel 24

It turns out that in Jesus’s way of looking at things, it’s not what you give, but what you give up that matters most

If you want to make a serious Kingdom investment, it is going to have a sacrificial earthly cost.

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.” -CS Lewis Mere Christianity

How can we share the attitude of the widow?

We remember the grace of the Lord and trust that the grace that saved us will be sufficient to sustain us; He’s more than capable of taking care of His children

I am not as concerned with the return on my money as I am with the return of my money. -Will Rogers.

When we consider who He is and what He has done, we ought to be driven by faith to invest more of ourselves in more of His work

Thomas Torrance likes to repeat a simple story of what he calls “the unconditional nature of grace.” He writes, “Our grasping of Christ by faith is itself enclosed within the mighty grasp of Christ.” Then he shares this story and quote:

I sometimes recall what happened when my daughter was learning to walk. I took her by the hand to help her, and I can still feel her fingers clutching my hand. She was not relying on her feeble grasp of my hand, but on my strong grasp of her hand. Is that not how we are to understand the faith by which we lay hold of Christ as our Savior? It is thus that our grasp of faith, feeble though it is, is grasped and enfolded in the mighty grasp of Christ who identifies himself with us, and puts himself in our place.

Today you may need to:

Begin to trust in the grace of Jesus

Begin to invest financially as a response to the grace of Jesus or reconsider how you’re investing financially in the work of the Kingdom

Become a part of this people as we seek the Kingdom together