The Heart of The Giver

It’s the thought that counts, right? Isn’t that how the saying goes? We usually say it to our children when they get a gift that they don’t love, or we say it to a loved when when they tell us that they got us something, but it isn’t much. And what we mean by this phrase is that the size of the gift or the actual contents of a gift is not as important as the thought and intention of the person giving the gift. We should care more about the thankful, sacrificial, loving generosity of the giver more than what is given to us.

I wanted to clarify that, as we start off together this morning, because while we say it is the thought that counts, the thought does count! A child who gives his mother a package of chewing gum as a birthday present is sweet and generous. A husband who gives his wife a package of chewing gum as a birthday present is likely looking for a place to sleep. One of my children was having a birthday party, and they were opening gifts from their friends. One of their friends had given them a book. It was a book that my child was not really excited about, but being gracious and grateful, my child smiled and said “thank you.”

And their friend said. “I’m glad you like it. At my house, we have this box. and when you get a gift you don’t want, you put the gift into this box. Then, when we forget to get a gift for someone, we pick something out of the box and give them that, so when I forgot to get you something I found this book in the box!” It may be the thought that counts, but the thought does count, doesn’t it?

Open your Bibles with me, if you will, to Mark 12. We are going to be in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 12 today. We’re going to begin reading at verse 41, and as we do so, I would invite those of you who are able to do so to stand with me in honor of the reading of God’s Word:

Mark 12:41–13:2 NASB95

And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.” As He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down.”

Let’s go to the Lord in prayer together: Heavenly, and gracious Father You are so good to us, and we are gathered here today in thanksgiving to praise Your Name. We have so much to be thankful for, and you are worthy of our praise and adoration, regardless of our circumstances. As we approach Your Word together, as we read it and consider it, we ask that You would be gracious with us this Morning. Send Your Holy Spirit to be among us. Lord, Spirit, would You help us to understand what You would teach us? Would You fill us with Your power and courage, so that we will do the things that you are calling us to? Would You help us to know You more fully, and change our hearts to be like yours. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

Thank you, you may be seated. The thought behind your giving matters. What you give matters, not for what it is , but because it reveals your motivations for giving. Your intentions, your motivations matter. They reveal your heart, what you truly love and what you truly trust in. We are in the midst of our celebration of Thanksgiving. This month, we are focusing on giving thanks to God, because He is our Father, our hope, Savior, our King, our first love, our source of everything, our provider, sustainer, healer, protector, and the list goes on and on.

We have so many reasons to be thankful to God. While the storm clouds are gathering in the world around us, while we have very real reasons to look at the things that are happening and to believe that we are living in the last days, we tend to look at this all wrong. These days are days of hope. We have hope because God is still on the move. He is drawing hearts to himself. There is a spiritual awakening happening. And while our days may be dark, while we may long for Christ to return, every day that He doesn’t is another opportunity for those who have not heard to hear. It is an opportunity for us to proclaim the truth of the Gospel and His love to those that are perishing.

Today is another chance for us to make disciples. Today is a day for us to let go of the fear that we’ve been living under and to embrace an attitude and lifestyle of Thanksgiving. Today is not a day to hunker in the bunker. We are not to form a holy huddle with our super cache of food, in hiding as the end comes. Rather, we are to stand on the hilltops and in the valley, using every resource available to us to show our thanksgiving to the God that we trust.

Even in the midst of this crazy, difficult year, Our God is worthy of our thanks and praise. This passage that we are considering today is centered on the worship, thanksgiving, and trust towards the Lord that you show in how you give to Him. It isn’t merely that you give to God that shows these things, but how you give. You’ll remember that last week, we were talking about our response to God in thanksgiving. And we were discussing that our praise, our serving, our giving, and our trust towards God are ways that we express our thankfulness to God. We were talking about thanksgiving being the very foundation of our love for God.

And today, what we’re going to see is that our giving towards God is really a barometer of our thanksgiving. Look at verse 41 with me

Mark 12:41 NASB95

And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums.

If you’ve got your listening guide, I would invite you to take notes this morning, and the first thing that I would ask you to make not of is this, that

Jesus sees your giving of thanks, or your lack of it

Over the last several weeks, I think that we have established that our God is a generous God. After all, He has given us everything that we have, right down to the air in our lungs. Everything that we have is from Him, and everything that we have belongs to Him. None of us enter this world with anything, and the last time I checked, no one dies and leaves this place with a u-haul.

Our God is a generous God. And He calls on us to be generous as well. In the very first days, when Cain and Able went to make their offerings before the Lord. Able offered his sacrifice to God of his livestock. And His offerings were of his firstlings. He gave to God from the very first and the very best, not knowing if any more would follow. Cain made an offering as well, but his offering was not his first or his best. And God favored the offering of Able.

And what we see in this is that your intention matters, your heart of true thanks and trust matters. And God sees the truth. In verse 41, we see that Jesus is sitting watching people putting money into the treasury. We’ve got an offering plate. It is sitting on a table by the front door. You can put in your normal tithes and offerings in there, or special offerings like for our new youth building. But I want you to imagine for a moment that, as you go out that door each Sunday, that Jesus is sitting there. He sees what you give to Him, and He sees what you keep in your pocket. He knows how much you gave and He knows how much you kept. And I want you to realize that this is reality.

Jesus sees what you give, and He sees what you don’t give. Proverbs 21:2 says

Proverbs 21:2 NASB95

Every man’s way is right in his own eyes, But the Lord weighs the hearts.

Jesus sees your giving in thanks. And while giving isn’t the only way that we thank Him, it is arguably the most important one, because it shows our heart to the Lord in a profound way. look at verses 41 and 42 together:

Mark 12:41–42 NASB95

And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.

You and I measure giving differently than God. We measure giving by dollars and cents. We measure it like the people who were going into the temple that day. We see the person who gives the largest dollar amount as the person who is the most generous, and the person that gives the smallest amount as an also gave. We smile at the child, dropping their only pennies into the offering, and we smile and say every little bit helps. And we also look at our bank accounts and we consider what we can afford to give.

Have you ever said that, I wonder? “I can’t afford to give right now,” or, maybe you’ve said “that’s all that I can afford to give right now.” You looked in your accounts, you looked in your wallet, and you thought about what you lacked, and you there already wasn’t enough, and you said to yourself there is no way I can give anything. Or, maybe, you’ve got a lot. In fact, you have a lot more than you need. You can give a lot and not even miss it, and so you give an amount that you won’t miss, an amount that you feel comfortable giving.

And this is how men measure generosity and thankfulness. We give by what we can afford, and the most thankful is the one who gives the most. But God measures these things differently. God looks at the heart of the giver. He looks at what you are trusting in, at the true measure of your generosity. Look at verses 43-44:

Mark 12:43–44 NASB95

Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”

If you don’t hear anything else that I say this morning, I want you to hear this next point. I want you to write it down, but more than that, I want you to remember that

God measures the thanks in our giving by the sacrifice it takes us

You and I need to give thanks to God. We need to give Him thanks in every area and in every aspect of our lives; and our financial giving, the giving of our treasure is a direct reflection of our level of thankfulness and love towards Him. In our giving to God, sacrifice is everything.

It would be easy to look at these verses and miss the heart of the message. Someone who is giving very little is not more thankful or holy because they are giving very little. Someone who is giving a lot is not a poor giver just because they have a lot to give. But what is at the heart of these verses, what is at the heart of what Christ is teaching us here is sacrifice. What this all comes down to is your heart. Is your heart rich and full of thanksgiving towards God, or is your heart poor and selfish? And what Jesus is saying is that your giving is a measure of your heart.

And this is good news for us. It is good news, because Jesus has given us a tool for looking at our own lives and truly knowing where we are. We can see where our own hearts trust. Remember, Mathew 6:21

Matthew 6:21 NASB95

for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

In other words, Jesus says that where the majority of your heart is, that is where you will put your treasure. It is a good thing for us to have ways to measure, soberly, where we are in our thanksgiving towards God because His ways are not our ways. To grow and to change, you have to have an accurate picture of where you are standing, and this passage gives us such a picture if we are willing to see it. If God measures our thanks in giving and, in turn, our hearts, by our level of sacrifice, then there are some things that will help us stay on track, and we are going to spend the rest of our time today looking at them. The first is this, that,

You will give to what you love, and you will love what you give to

Jesus says that the widow gave more than all the other contributors. Why? Because they gave out of their surplus. They gave what they could afford, and they were rich so they could afford to give a lot. But they kept the majority of what God had given them. They kept most everything that God had given to them, and were only willing to give a small fraction back to Him in thanksgiving. Sure, by dollar amount, they gave a lot. But, compared to what they kept, they gave very little.

But the widow gave everything that she had. There was no safety net for her to fall back on. There was no cash sitting in an account. She didn’t know where her next meal was coming from. She simply knew that she owed everything that she had to God, and so she gave everything she had in thanksgiving. Think about that for a moment. She had money in her hand to eat with. Without that money, she doesn’t eat, at least in man’s economy. But rather than eating, she gives the money to God.

Now, friends, I have heard of parents not eating so that their children could have seconds. I have seen parents go without so that their kids could have what they need. And that is because, as a parent, you love your kids more than yourself.

I have heard about husbands giving up things that they love so that they could give their wives something they needed or desired. I have heard of wives doing the same thing, because husbands and wives love each other more than they love themselves.

Is it really that audacious for us to think that if we really, truly love God more than ourselves, that we would give to Him until it hurt? I don’t think that it is, because when you love someone, you will give out of the richness of that love. When you love, you will give, even to your own detriment, because you are so thankful to God, and for who He is that you are willing to go without in order to be able to show thanks and love to God. This leads us to our next sub-point here. Look at verse 44 one more time:

Mark 12:44 NASB95

for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”

Our next measuring rod this morning is this:

A poor heart gives from the excess; A thankful heart gives away what it needed

Put another way, it isn’t the amount that you have that determines if you are rich; rather, it is how much of what you have that you give back to God. A thankful person doesn’t look at their bank account and ask what they can afford to give, they go without so that they can give more. A thankful man gives sacrificially to the Lord. A thankful woman considers it a blessing to go without for the work of the Kingdom.

A thankful heart gives back to God, because they believe that what they have belongs to God, and they love Him so much that giving to Him in thanksgiving comes before their own needs. When we were overseas as missionaries for the IMB, Bethany and I worked diligently to stretch every dollar we earned to give more to the work we were doing. We didn’t have a ministry budget, and so everything we did came out of our pockets. But we knew that every dollar that was in our pockets came from the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, which meant that every dollar came as a sacrifice to God, and we did not want to see sacrifices made in vain. A thankful heart gives away what it needed.

A poor heart gives from the excess. The person with a poor heart gives only what doesn’t cost them anything, and when things are tight, nothing at all. Beloved, it all really comes back to your love and thanks towards the Lord. Some of us struggle to give up some of what we want so that we can give; but what God truly calls us to in love of Him is far deeper; it is to love Him more than ourselves. What would it look like to miss a meal to give to God? What would you be willing to give up to express thanksgiving to God? What would you be willing to go without so that God could be glorified by the richness of your giving?

Look at the last couple verses with me:

Mark 13:1–2 NASB95

As He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down.”

The treasury, where Jesus had been sitting, was located in the Temple compound. Isn’t that just a picture of what we’re talking about, that God would have us deposit our treasure in the heart of our worship to Him. But, As they are walking out of the Temple, the disciples are commenting on the stones and the workmanship of the temple. They were trusting in the strength of its construction, and marveling at the work of men’s hands. In a place built for worship, walking with the Lord, having just talked about the thankful heart that gives everything back to God, the disciples are marveling at the brick work. And this is exactly what we do.

Rather than giving and trusting the Lord in thanksgiving, we cling to the things of this earth. We hold onto things we have made, and kingdoms that we have built. We find our security, our rock, right here, and not in the King of Kings. And in this, we find the next piece of our measuring rod for self-examination, that

Giving what you can afford is trusting in yourself. Giving so you lack is trusting in God.

I know, beloved, that this is hard. It is hard for me, as it is for you. But, remember that last week, we were seeing that our response to God in thanksgiving is to praise Him, to serve Him, and to give to Him, remembering His provision, and trusting that He will do it again.

And don’t mishear me. It is wise to be financially responsible. The debtor is slave to the creditor. That truck payment will get in the way of a lot of things. Those credit cards can be the end of your hopes and dreams. It is good to save for the future, and to live within your means. It is a good thing to be frugal in most things. However, you need to remember that God’s Kingdom is an upside down Kingdom. His ways are not ours, and in our giving, God calls on us to be reckless.

We want to build bricks. We want to build ourselves a firm foundation, a strong base and financial house. It is hard, in this day and age to make a dollar. I joke sometimes that my bank account is just a funnel money passes through as it’s going somewhere else. But here’s the thing: when I give what I can afford, I’m trusting in myself. I’m making sure I’ve set enough back, and even though I know that God gave it to me, I’m holding onto it because I’m not trusting God. We already have a firm foundation; His name is Jesus.

Have you ever been part of a trust fall? You climb up three feet into the air, turn around backwards, close your eyes, cross your arms and drop back-deliberately falling in the most vulnerable way-because you are trusting that the people below you will catch you. This is what our giving in thanks is supposed to look like. It isn’t giving what is safe, it is giving abundantly, giving out of what we needed so that we are falling on the arms of God’s provision, giving the first fruits while the crop is still in the field, still isn’t all the way ripe, when we know the only way we make it is if God shows up.

You won’t get a big bank account giving like this, but you will be rich. Rich in thankfulness and love to the Lord. You will be rich in your trust of the Lord, as you learn to rely on Him more than what He has already provided. When your thanksgiving looks like this, it will change your life. It can bring you a joy and a peace that you cannot know outside of living in the complete dependency of God. He will be security in this world, where nothing is secure.

Did you note Jesus’ response in verse 2, the last verse of our passage? What did He says? You think what you have built is great. You think that your foundation is solid; but not one brick will be left upon another. Everything in this life is temporary. All of it will turn to dust and blow away. Nothing of your earthly treasure will last, so why are we so consumed with holding onto it?

Psalm 103:14–16 NASB95

For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust. As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, And its place acknowledges it no longer.

Let me leave you with a word of promise this morning. The things of this life are temporary, so give them back to the Lord. Give recklessly to Him in thanksgiving. Give like the widow, and when you do, you will find that

What you give to the Lord, you will gain in eternity

Don’t let your eyes become fixed on the crumbling dust of this life. Live your life in thanksgiving before the Lord, and live richly with Him for all of eternity.

Matthew 6:19–21 NASB95

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The Lord has richly blessed you. Won’t you richly bless the Lord. Won’t you give to Him according to the measure of your thankfulness. Won’t you give to Him until trusting Him is your only choice. This morning, won’t we start storing our treasure in heaven, that our hearts will be found in His Kingdom.

I don’t know how you give to the Lord. I don’t know if you give; but Jesus does. He knows what you give to Him, and what you keep for yourself. This morning, and every morning, He is sitting there by the treasury, reading the hearts of men. As you come to His altar this morning, in thanksgiving, do you come as the poor rich man or as the wealthy widow? The altar is open this morning. It is here for those whose hearts would belong to Him. It is open to those that would turn to the Lord in reckless giving because they are ready to fall in trust. Let today be the start of a life of great thanksgiving, because truly we have a lot to be thankful for.

Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning as a people that are thankful. We know that all that we have is yours, and that without you we would not even have life. Forgive us, Lord, for the ways that we trust in what you have provided more than we trust in you. Help us to place our trust in you, as we give in thanks. Give us the courage and the joy to begin giving to you with reckless abandon. Help us to give according to the measure of our thankfulness to you, that our treasure may be invested in your eternal Kingdom, and our joy may be found in You. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.