Our Offering

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We have come to the end of chapter 12 of Mark. A lot has happened. Jesus has spent a lot of time in conversations with temple leaders. They have been trying to get him to say something that would incriminate him, but he has taken their words and actions and turned them to point the people to the truth of God. We come to a point where he changes his audience from the crowd to his smaller group of disciples.

Mark 12:41–44 ESV

41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Prayer

We like to impress others at times. There was a time in my life where I really wanted to impress someone specific. When me and Brittany began dating each other, it was at the top of my priority list with her that I needed to impress her. I wanted her to know that out of all the guys that she could be with, that I was the best. In many ways, we can be like the scribes that were described right before this.

If you look back, Jesus warns people of the scribes. He says that they put on this image to try to impress others and make them think that they are something they are not. This same idea will continue with our passage today. People will do things for show to impress others while God is not impressed at all.

We need to boil this down to a heart issue. The problem with heart issues is that we can often hide them. We can do things to make it look like our hearts are in the right place while it is a show that we are putting on. We may be doing it for many reasons. It could be to impress others. Maybe it is us trying to keep up a certain image that we are expected to have. Or maybe it is just because we feel obligated to do it. These are all heart issues that need to be changed by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us.

In this same chapter, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment was. He equated it to be about the heart. Love God with everything that you have and love others like you love yourself. This is about the heart.

Main Point: God wants your whole heart

It would be easy to take our text today and make it all about money. But that would be wrong. It does deal with money, and we will deal with that, but ultimately it deals with our heart. God wants your heart. God wants you to love him with everything that you have. God wants you to devote your entire life to him. This doesn’t mean that you quit your job and move to be a missionary in another country. But it means taking the life you already have and living it for him.

God has given you things. He has given you treasure, he has given you talents, and he has given you time. How are we using these things to serve God? Let’s be very clear here. I am not saying that we need to treat the church like we are in a cult. My name might be David but my last name is not Kuresh. We are not a cult. But we are in a relationship with Jesus and we should treat it as such. Relationships have buy in from both sides. Jesus laid his life down for us, we should be doing everything we can to serve him.

Am I giving my everything to God?

On February 13th, 2013, an anomaly happened. Mississippi State mens basketball team was playing Missouri. Mississippi State was losing 34-10 at halftime. They knew that the game was far gone at this point. They put in a player named Baxter Price. Now, Price never saw much playing time. He was a walk-on player for the team. In the first half, one of their players was 0-8 in shooting. So, you would imagine that Price would go out and have the opportunity to do whatever he wanted because anything would have been better than what was going on. He was given 8 minutes on the court in the second half. 1 of 5 men on the court for Mississippi State and for 8 minutes, he had no assists, rebounds, steals, blocks, fouls, turnovers, or shot attempts. There is no statistic for it, but we can assume that he probably did not touch the ball at all.

There are too many people in the church today that treat serving in the kingdom of God like Baxter Price treated that basketball game. They are there but they are not contributing anything to it. And if you hear me say that and you know that you give everything you can to God’s kingdom, then rest assured that I am not talking about you. But I know that there are areas that I can personally give more to God’s kingdom.

As we think about this, we should look at our service to the church. God builds his kingdom through the work of the local church. We, as Christians, should covenant ourselves with a local body, meet regularly with this body, build relationships within this body, be encouraged and empowered by the body, and then be sent out by this body to work in the world for God’s kingdom. In God’s kingdom, no one is insignificant. There is not second string or sideline Christians. Christianity is no spectator sport.

What does this have to do with our text today? It has to do with our heart posture and how we surrender ourselves to be used within God’s kingdom. So let’s work our way through God’s word.

Mark 12:41 ESV

41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums.

A lot is going on at the temple. Jesus is being approached by different people. You have the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the chief priests coming up to him. They all ask him about different things but they all have the same agenda. To discredit him.

The temple would have been a very busy place. Many people had come into Jerusalem for the passover celebration. If you can remember back to one of my first sermons on the week of passover they are celebrating, you will remember about how the leaders of the temple would be making tons of money selling the sacrificial animals to the tourist coming in for the celebration.

And many people coming to a celebration like this would want to be noticed. Things are no different today. Like I have said, you want to make an impression. So, if you were already wealthy, you could impress people by putting in large sums of money into the offering box.

They would not do the offering like we do it today. You saw it just a little bit ago. We have plates that go around and the ushers walk up the aisle and pass it down for you to put money into. Why we do plates, I don’t know. But that is not how they would do it. They would have a box type structure where they would take it and put it in. But even more than that, the opening of it would be sort of horn shaped and people would take their coins and drop it in the opening. And the more coins you put in, the more noise it made.

Back when we used actual, physical money more often, I would save all of my coins up. I actually learned this from my dad. When we were kids, my dad had this humongous pickle jar that he would put his change in at the end of the day when he got home from work. What he did was he saved all of these coins and would use it to pay for us to go out to eat when we would go on vacations and things like that. But when we would go on vacation, you could not feasibly take a large glass jar full of coins and go into a restaurant and pay like that. You needed cash. So we would take it to this nifty thing called the coin star. You would dump your change in it and cash it in. And if you have ever used one of these machines, you can probably hear the sound of the machine counting coins as I describe this.

Just imagine being in the temple and hearing the massive amount of coins being dropped into the money box from one individual. You would be impressed. You would just imagine how rich that person must be. But then, you would compare it to all of the other people who put money in.

Mark 12:42 ESV

42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny.

So we have this striking comparison. We have rich people flooding the money boxes of coins. We have this detail that it is many rich people. Many rich people compared to one poor widow. They would be taking up time putting all of their money in the box while she would have taken her 2 small coins and dropped them in and quickly move on.

The show for everyone would have been seeing these people giving large sums of money in the temple. They would have been noticing the sounds coming from the box for each person. And just like today, the more money, the more respect. But then, we have someone who would not have been well thought of to walk up and give very little. She already had things working against her. First off, she was a woman so she would have been thought of as insignificant by many. Then, she was a widow. She did not have a husband to take care of her and provide for her. And that brings us to the third thing. She was poor. All of these would have factored into how people would look at her. She was looked at by many as to have little to no value in the world.

I have a friend of some friends that I think of when I hear people talk about value. His name is Daniel Ritchie. Daniel is a pastor now. He gets to travel around as a sort of evangelist. But when Daniel was born, many thought he had no value in our world. See, Daniel was born with no arms. There was no accident or anything where he lost them, he was just born without them. He often tells the story of his birth where the doctor pulls his father aside and suggests to his father that they should just let him die since life would be so difficult for him. But his father refused because his father saw value in all life. There are very little things that Daniel cannot do despite having no arms. He can drive, he can shoot guns, shoot a bow and arrow, he can write, and I have watch a video of him throwing an axe. All of this while having no arms. Just because society might look at someone as having no value doesn’t mean that God looks the same. And Jesus points that out to his disciples.

Mark 12:43–44 ESV

43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

She has put in more than everyone else. God looks at value different than man does. God looks at contributions differently than man does. I know this because I know people who would argue with Jesus that he is wrong here. Jesus is not talking about monetary value when he is comparing here. Jesus is talking about the value of devotion.

See, the rich people did this to gain attention and to be noticed. They were not financially hurt by their contributions. They had plenty. They probably saw this as an investment for them. Not a kingdom investment but a social investment. They can gain notoriety from this. But in contrast, this poor widow was not looking to gain anything from this.

She is truly showing everyone what it means to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. To love God with everything she has, even her 2 pennies. Jesus points out that this was what she needed to live on.

Trust. She not only loved God with everything she has but she trusted him with everything. She needed this money to live on, yet she still gave. She trusted God with everything and she had faith that he would still provide for her even when she gave all that she had. I want this to settle in with us here.

Once she put in her two pennies, there was nothing left. She did not have a life of comfort, but a life of struggle. She did not have a provider because she was a widow. There was no savings account or 401K. Her two pennies was everything. And she gave. Not because there was some sort of pressure or because of some sort of guilt. But because she loved and trusted God with everything.

I want to get very personal and practical with you. I read this passage here about a woman who gave everything to God and I wonder if we are doing that. Are we, as Immanuel Baptist Church, giving God all that we have. He has given us time, talents, and treasure. Are we devoting these things to the Kingdom of God?

Many of you may hear this and think that I am expecting things that are outrageous. Here is what I am not saying. I am not saying that you need to quit your job, sell everything you have, and give all of the money to the church and come and live here. Let’s not be ridiculous. But is what you are giving out of abundance or is it sacrificial?

Are you cutting time out of things to come and serve alongside the local church for the kingdom of God? Has God given you talents that you are keeping to yourself instead of using in the local church for the kingdom of God? Are you giving the bare minimum financially for the advancement of the kingdom of God? I want to be clear that I am not saying these things for the church to get more money for me to get a bigger paycheck. I have not asked for a raise since I have been here and don’t plan on it. When more money comes in, it will be for us to use in ministry here to reach people and impact our community.

I know that most of us are involved in ministry here in some aspect. Whether it is handing out bulletins or working in the nursery once a month. But, is that just the bare minimum. We don’t need to be like the basketball player who shows up and does as little as he can get away with.

I want to say something and it is hard for me to say. So I don’t take this lightly. I hear people say that they want to see our church grow. But if the same people continue to be the ones who are doing things here at church, then we won’t grow. We cannot facilitate and accommodate growing any larger than what we are. There are ministry needs that we have that if we don’t find people who have the desire to do it, then it won’t get done.

So I want to give you a list of things that we need nearly immediately. We need someone to be a children’s director. We need a youth director. Not having these positions for a while now has affected our Sunday School program and our Wednesday night bible studies. But on top of that, we don’t only need someone to be the director, we need volunteers.

I think we can agree that having a church that is focused on youth and families ministries is important for the survival of a church. It is time for us to put our time and talents and treasure where our mouth is.

Maybe someone is here and has the desire to do this but feels like they don’t have the competency. That is okay. We will help you learn and grow. That is not problem. We will not let you be thrown to the wolves. And maybe that is why we are in the position we are in and I want to own that. God has really been working on me to be a more active leader and shepherd over the last several months. So we will work together and grow together.

Conclusion

Are you giving your all to God? This is something that we all must face. Being a Christian, being a member of a church is more than just showing up. We are all called to be laborers. That may look different for each of us. Maybe you are getting up in age some and it has become more difficult to physically do things. We would not expect you to want to keep the nursery. But you can pray. Maybe you can write cards of encouragement to our shutins. Or maybe you have been blessed financially and you are able to give out of an abundance, not to look good but because you love God with everything that you have.

We all have a place in the kingdom of God. We all have a place and an assignment here in the local church. From experience, I can tell you that not everyone is right for everything in the church. There are fewer positions that I have not held in a church than I have. So I can tell you that we are not all designed to be on the finance committee or properties committee just like I am not designed to work in a nursery. But let’s work together and find that place for each of us.

I firmly believe that God is going to build his church. I believe that he wants to build this church. But he needs willing laborers to do so. Tonight, we are going to look at some things about the area that we live in. I will tell you that without a shadow of a doubt, the people that live around us need Immanuel Baptist Church here. They need a group of loving believers to be here and to show them the love of Jesus and point them to repentance and belief.