The scripture reading this morning comes from the Gospel of Luke, chapters 20 and 21.
Please follow in your bulletin.
Now there came to him some of the Sadducees who say that there is no resurrection,
and they questioned him saying,
Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife, and he is childless,
his brother should marry his wife and raise up children to his brother.
Now there were seven brothers, and the first one took a wife and died childless,
and the second and the third married her,
and in the same way all seven died, leaving no children.
Finally, the woman died also.
In the resurrection, therefore, which one's wife will she be?
For all seven had married her.
Jesus said to them,
The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.
With those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead,
neither marry nor are given in marriage.
For they cannot die even, they cannot even die anymore because they are like angels or sons of God,
being sons of the resurrection.
With that, the dead are raised.
Even Moses showed in the passage about the burning bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac,
the God of Jacob.
Now he is not the God of the dead, but the living.
For all live to him.
Some of the scribes answered and said,
Teacher, you have spoken well.
For they did not have courage to question him any longer about anything.
Then he said to them,
How is it that they say that Christ is David's son?
For David himself says in the book of Psalms,
The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
Therefore, David calls him Lord.
And how is it he is his son?
And while all the people were listening,
He said to the disciples,
Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes
and love respectful greetings in the marketplaces,
and chief seats in the synagogues,
and places of honor at banquets,
who devour widows' houses.
And for appearances' sake, offer long prayers.
These will receive greater condemnation.
And he looked up,
and he saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury.
And he saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins.
And he said,
Truly, I say to you,
This poor widow put in more than all of them,
for they all put out of their surplus,
put into the offering,
but she, out of her poverty,
put in all that she had to live on.
This is God's word.
We've been in a journey in the Gospel of Luke.
If you've been with us for three years,
you've seen us go through 20 chapters up until this point,
not all at once, just a little at a time.
And you would see that there are certain themes
that Christ continues to teach on
and talk about through the passage.
One of the biggest themes that we've been talking about
is the kingdom of God.
It's a theme that's threaded through the whole Gospel of Luke.
It's this theme that he's trying to tell us
or show us as Christ teaches
that there's a big difference between our kingdom
that we live in now,
the things that we value,
the things that we grab onto,
the things that we cling,
the things that we deem important
in God's kingdom.
And today, he comes to
probably the most difficult lesson
for any of us to learn.
It's the lesson that often and continually drags us away
from God's kingdom.
It's the lesson of our money.
And what he basically is going to say is,
if you don't want your stuff
to have hold of you,
if you don't want to be controlled by your finances,
if you don't want to be controlled by your money,
if you don't want to be controlled by your financial appetite,
you need to give it away.
Because the only way you can break a hold of something
is by releasing it.
And so what I thought we'd do
is we'd try a little exercise today in giving away.
What I would like for you to do is take out your wallet.
Come on.
Hold it up.
It's not like your Bible.
This is my Bible.
This is my wallet.
This is your wallet.
You know, Christ is going to say today
that so much trouble and so much difficulty
comes from this object that we have right here.
For some of us, it represents power.
For some of us, it represents security.
For some of us, it represents popularity and wealth
and the ability to have freedom
and to do whatever we want.
And he says to us that this little object here
and what it represents
draws us away from the kingdom of God
more than anything else.
And to be broken from the power of this little object,
we need to give it away.
So what I want you to do
is I want you just to hand the wallet
to the person next to you.
Go ahead, give to them.
Here, I'll give mine to my wife
or I'll give mine to Charles.
I don't often give my wallet to my wife,
but this is a step of faith, right?
Now we're going to do something
we've never done before.
We're going to take an offering.
So what I'm going to ask the offering stewards
to come forward
and I want you to open that wallet up deep, right?
And just grab in there
and just give till it hurts, right?
So, no.
I'm teasing.
Jesus has been teaching about the kingdom of God.
He's been showing us that
His kingdom is very different than ours.
He's come to Jerusalem.
You can give the wallet back.
I know some of you are weirding out
and freaking out over it,
so go ahead and give it back.
He's come to Jerusalem.
We've heard this
because His whole life
has been focused towards Jerusalem.
And He's coming in.
He's teaching the kingdom of God.
He's being followed by maybe 10,000 people.
Now it's the Sabbath.
It's the Passover.
It's the entrance into the Passover.
So Jerusalem,
which is usually about 25 or 30,000 people,
is now 2 million people.
2 million people are crowded into a space
that only 25,000 should be living in.
So it's amazing.
It's noisy.
It's dirty.
It's out of control.
And Jesus comes up the Temple Mount
and He walks in
and He chases out the money chasers
and He basically takes over the teaching
within the Temple of God.
And as He's doing this,
He is confronted by the religious leaders of His time.
They have an idea
of what the kingdom of God should be like
and so they're holding it
and they're trying to transpose it
over what the kingdom of God should be like
and it's just not working.
The first group that comes in
is the Pharisees or the scribes.
They're the conservatives.
They would believe in the sovereignty of God.
They would believe in God's word.
They would believe in the Torah.
They took the Ten Commandments
and they wrote it out to 635 other commandments.
I mean, they believe in tradition.
They believe in teaching well.
I mean, that is all about them.
And as they hear Jesus teach,
there is a struggle in their kingdom
and that struggle is authority and control.
And they start asking Jesus
some authority and control questions.
And Jesus has to remind them
that their kingdom is not God's kingdom.
And the things in God's kingdom work differently.
He goes on and he teaches them
about the parable of the vineyard
and the question of the parable of the vineyard
is ownership and stewardship
and who owns what.
And we're told that after this confrontation,
they try to trick him with this coin.
And again, he says, you know,
that's your kingdom.
But in God's kingdom,
everything is his.
Everything is his.
Verse 26, they shut up.
They never ask him another question again.
And then we get to the passage today
and now the Sadducees come in.
The Sadducees have never confronted Jesus.
They've never asked him a question.
This is the only time in the Gospels
the Sadducees come in and ask him a question.
The Sadducees would be the liberals.
They would be the popular people.
They would be the wealthy people.
They would be the founding fathers
and the founding members of the city.
They would be the people who were into their looks.
They would be very sympathetic to Rome.
They were focused on purity outwardly.
The Sadducees were always fighting the Pharisees.
There was this big struggle on the issue
of purity and holiness.
And they always won after each other.
And you never knew really who won
because the Sadducees had control of the temple.
The Sadducees believed in free will.
Do whatever you want.
There was no angels.
There's no devils.
There's no resurrection.
This life is all there is.
This is all there is.
So if this is all there is,
you've got to make the most of this life.
This is what you've got to do.
Make the most of this life.
It's a lot like people in Hong Kong
that we run into, right?
This is all there is.
How can we make the most of our lives?
And so the Pharisees come
and they ask Jesus a question.
It's in your bulletin.
It's found in verses 29 through 33.
It's a very interesting question.
It's not really a question.
It's basically a question to make Jesus look stupid
because they don't even believe in the resurrection,
but they're asking a question about the resurrection.
Now we're told through historians
that the Pharisees have been trying to answer this question
for 100 years.
And the Sadducees always ask them this question
and they can't answer the question
because it's really starting to bother them.
It's one of those questions that your friends ask you, right?
You're talking to them about God
and they'll say something like,
you know, if God is all-powerful
and God is all-loving
and God knows everything,
then how can he do this or how can he do that?
And you'll sit back and you're like,
oh, it's one of those questions
that's made to make you look stupid, right?
They might ask you a question like,
well, if God is all-powerful,
can he make a Diet Coke can so big
that even he can't pick up?
Right?
Come on, work with me here.
It's one of those questions that you know
that's just a foolish question.
And Jesus answers it right away.
And he tells them,
hey, you guys,
you don't understand the kingdom of God.
You're thinking about your kingdom,
but you're not thinking about God's kingdom
and things operate very differently
in God's kingdom.
Then in verse 40, they shut up.
I mean, they're afraid to ask him any more questions.
They don't want to ask him any more questions
because they look stupid
when they ask Jesus questions.
Jesus has one last lesson he wants to teach us.
I mean, this is his last lesson on the kingdom of God.
I mean, Jesus spoke about money
more than anything else in his ministry.
45% of the time, he's talking about money.
He's talking about hell and heaven.
He's talking about those things.
He's talking about money
because he knows that it has a pull on our hearts.
And after this, Jesus is going to go away.
He's never going to come back to the temple.
He's going to be on the mountain.
He's going to be in the upper room.
He's going to be preparing his disciples for his death.
But he has one more lesson he wants to teach us.
And so he's sitting off to the side in the treasury.
And we're told that the treasury
was this amazing place in the temple.
It was this huge, like, you know,
the biggest place in the convention center
is bigger than that.
It's like the meat locker, the big hangar,
the airplane hangar.
It's just massive airplane hangar.
And as you walked into the temple,
there would be 13 bronze containers.
They were like a trumpet, a shofar,
but it was the big part on the bottom
and it would move up to the top.
And people would come in
and they'd give their offerings.
Now, it was very interesting
because some of them said
for offering for doves,
offering for wood,
offering for frankincense,
offering for clothing,
offering for sin offering,
old offering for sin offering,
new offering for sin offering,
and then there were six free-willed offerings.
And so before the sermon started,
or before the time started in the temple,
the people came in
and the historians tell us it was amazing.
I mean, wealth and power
and kings coming in
and people are carrying these big bags of gold
and they're walking in there
and they're dragging it
and they're dripping it off
and they have all this money in their hand, right?
And they have this money
and it's kind of drippling
and they're walking
so they're drawing attention to themselves
and people are looking at them.
And they come up
and some people say
that actually the priest would be there
and they would count the money.
And then they would say,
Tobin Miller gave $5,000 a day.
And people go, ooh.
Daniel gave $1,000 a day.
Ooh.
Howard, he gives $10 in his chariot keys.
Ooh.
And we're told that people made a spectacle of themselves.
They would pull in
and sometimes they would go,
see if anybody was listening.
Sometimes they would do this
and no one was listening.
They'd go,
and people would wake up.
And so Jesus is watching
people give their offering to God.
And he realizes there's a collision happening
in their kingdoms.
But their kingdoms are very different.
And you see in the text,
you read it there,
what he says.
There's three things
that I want to challenge us with
to think about
as we look at these last four verses.
There's three things
I think that Jesus wants
to tell us about
what does it look like
to give in the kingdom of God.
And the first thing he says
is in God's kingdom,
in the inverted kingdom,
God sees everything.
Did you know that?
Verses one and two tell it.
And he looked up and he saw,
the word saw is a very special word.
It means he understood.
He looked in their soul.
He understood what was going on in their life.
And he saw what was going on in their life.
And the rich came in
and they're putting,
and the word is throw,
let fall,
let tumble.
They're throwing all their gifts in there.
And as they're doing it,
Jesus sees
what's going on in their life
and what's going on in their heart.
And then this widow comes up.
Can you imagine what she felt like?
Following guys with bags of money.
And this little widow comes up
and she takes the two smallest coins.
They're called lepta.
It's probably the only Jewish coin
talked about in the Bible.
It actually,
the word means peeling or shaving
or it means feathery.
It means nothing.
And you can imagine her
walking into this temple complex
and what did the priest do?
Did they look at her offering
and yell it out?
Or did they just look at her
and go,
get out of here.
Go, get out of here.
And she comes in there
and she has these two little coins.
You can't even hear it.
But the passage says
that Jesus hears
and he sees everything.
I think sometimes we forget that,
don't we?
I mean, sometimes we live life
and we give and we do
with our resources and our things
and sometimes we make choices
and we don't ever think about
Christ looking at us
and looking at our hearts
and what's going on in our hearts.
But in the kingdom of God,
in the inverted kingdom,
he sees everything.
The kingdom of the Pharisees
was all about appearance
and how well you look
and what you did.
And you know,
the Sadducees could care less
because the Sadducees,
all that was important
was here and now
because when they died,
there's nothing.
So the fear of God
or what God did for them
didn't mean anything.
All that mattered
was here and now.
But the passage says here
that in God's kingdom,
he sees everything
and how we give
in our heart
is very, very important
because it shows us
and it shows God
what kingdom we are actually
a part of.
It's called stewardship.
Jesus preached about it
over and over and over
in Luke.
If you're faithful with this,
I give you more.
If you're not faithful with this,
I take these things away.
Jesus, God,
sees everything in his kingdom
and what we do with it
is very important.
The second thing
that sticks out to me
in this passage
of how our kingdoms
collide in money
is just basically
in the inverted kingdom,
accounting is done
very differently,
isn't it?
I mean,
you look at this passage
and you realize
that God is an accountant
in a very strange way.
I mean,
you and I,
we judge people
and we judge ourself
by how much we give.
Well,
how much we give?
If a wealthy person
comes in
and they give a million dollars,
we go,
whoa,
they gave a lot.
But when someone comes in
and they bring two lepta,
you don't even notice them.
They didn't give anything.
I mean,
we look at names
on buildings
and things raised up
as monuments
to ourself.
But in God's kingdom,
what we give
isn't so important
as what is left over.
Do you realize
that's what he's saying?
But God's saying
it's not so important
what you're giving,
but the heart behind it,
and he's asking the question,
what's left?
What's left over?
And why did you leave it over?
Did you leave it over
because you didn't think
God was good?
Did you leave it over
because you didn't think
God was going to take care of you?
The passage is saying
that in the inverted kingdom,
giving is about
what is left
and why.
So what Jesus is saying here
in his passage
is that giving
isn't actually about giving,
but giving is about our heart.
And how we feel.
Now we live in a kingdom today
that could care less
about how we feel, right?
I mean, I've thought
about this before.
What would happen
if you went to the IRS
or the IRD
and you said,
you know what,
I was going to give taxes
this year,
but I just didn't really
feel like it.
It was just so inconvenient.
Maybe next year.
Or you know,
I was going to give taxes
this year,
but I really wanted
that car.
And so I bought
the car instead.
Or maybe next year
if I get more money
and more bonus,
then I'll give taxes.
And the Pharisees
and the Sadducees
were going,
oh, right on.
Because it was outward appearance
and what was important.
But the passage says
that she gave out of love.
It was an act of worship.
So the question
I have to ask myself
is how do I give?
I mean,
when I give my money,
what am I thinking?
Am I thinking that God's
going to supply all my needs?
Or do I think
if I have just enough left over,
I can do these things
and do these things
and that's okay.
But in God's kingdom,
sacrifice
is what is praised.
I mean,
if you're like me,
sacrifice means,
well,
I'm not going to eat
at Ruth Chris
this weekend,
but I'm going to eat
at another steakhouse.
But in God's kingdom,
sacrifice means
not eating steak
that week.
And I realize
if we're honest,
if I'm honest,
we don't really
sacrifice
very much.
Do we?
Jesus says here
that in the kingdom of God,
in the inverted kingdom,
it's not what we give
that is important,
but it's the heart behind it
and what is left over.
And finally,
what we see here
is in God's kingdom,
in the inverted kingdom,
that even the smallest
amount given,
if it's given in love,
in faith,
can do amazing things.
I mean,
he says here
in verses three and four,
look at this lady,
she's given more
than everybody else.
And if you think about that,
you know,
she's given these
two little coins,
they're nothing.
But in God's world,
he can use these two coins
to change
everything.
Do we believe that?
In 1966,
you've heard him speak
two weeks ago
and I've seen it happen
over and over in my life.
John Bechtel,
when we had our anniversary,
John came up
and his dad was here
after the occupation
of World War II
and he started all the churches
that basically birthed our church
and John Bechtel
told us a story
about 1966.
He and Donna come
and their goal is
to reach children
of Hong Kong.
And he said
at that time
there were four million people
living in Hong Kong.
Two million of them
were 18 years or younger.
And they prayed
about how can we reach the kids?
What are we going to do?
What's going to happen here?
How can we reach these kids?
And they got this idea
we're going to start a camp.
And so they were looking around
for almost a year
and they found this piece
of property in Fanling
that was about four acres.
But the bad thing was
the government had just built
this one million dollar
building on it.
But it wasn't being used.
And so John goes
to the government
and says hey
we need this.
We want to reach.
We want to minister
to the youth
and children of Hong Kong.
Can you give it to us?
And the guy's thinking about
okay I'll tell you what
this is 1966.
We can sell it to you
for $240,000.
Now John was making
like $50 a month.
And he's like
that's crazy money.
I can't.
There's no way I could do that.
That's impossible.
He goes well
we'll sell it to you
for $240,000.
And as John was in the office
there was a guy
who was in charge
of fundraising
for his denomination.
And he heard it
and he said
John that's no problem
I can do it.
And so that guy
went back to America
and for four months
he stumped churches
and talked to people
and asked for money
and asked for funding
and at the end of four months
John gets his letter.
and it starts off
dear John
it's really bad
when you start off
you know even
I'm sorry
but we've tried
for four months
and we've had
no response.
No one's given anything.
Please find the letter
that came in
from little Belinda Holmes.
And in the package
there's a little letter
from Belinda Holmes.
She's 14 years old.
She'd heard the guy
speak at the church
and she wrote this letter
out to John
and she said
dear John
I want to be a part
of reaching kids
in Hong Kong
I want to use my money
I've stopped eating
ice cream
for two weeks.
Here's my one dollar.
So John's looking there
and he owes
$240,000
he has one dollar.
He goes
this is crazy
nothing's ever
going to happen to this.
So he goes
well this is what
God gave me
so I'm going to use it.
Because God can take
a small thing
given in faith
and he can use it
in amazing ways
and he goes to the office
and he talks to the guy
he goes
you have your $240,000
he goes
I don't really have
$240,000
but I have this.
The guy reads
the letter
from a 14 year old
who gave up
her ice cream
for two weeks
looks at the one dollar
he kind of laughs
and he goes
okay
I'll sell it to you
for one dollar.
And since that time
1.3 million
children
in Hong Kong
have gone
through that camp.
1.3 million
and over
120,000 of them
have said
that they have
come to the Lord
because of that.
In God's kingdom
small amounts
given in faith
can do amazing things.
Now I have a lot
of other questions
to ask Jesus
when I get to heaven
when I see this.
You know like
well why didn't you
just go up behind
and take the money
and give it back to her
and go here daughter
you need this more
than I do.
But he didn't.
He allowed her
to give out of the joy.
I mean why didn't
he let her give
because he knew
that the temple
was corrupt.
You're being a bad steward.
But he didn't.
He allowed her
to give out of joy
because he knew
that in God's kingdom
in God's inverted kingdom
small things
can do
amazing things.
Listen to what I'm saying.
I'm not saying
that God wants your money.
God does not need
your money.
God wants you.
He wants a relationship
with you.
And he knows
that money
has such a strong
pull on us
that until we give
that up
we're going to have
a hard time
living in his kingdom.
So the question is
what does our giving
say about us?
If Jesus were watching us
as we came
to put our money
in the offering box
what would he see
in our heart?
What would he think
about us?
I've often thought
that Jesus is watching
this lady
this poor widow
come and give her
everything
and I wonder
if Jesus is thinking
in his mind
in three days
I'm going to the cross
and I'm going to give
everything for her.
I'm going to give
everything for Tobin.
I'm so thankful
he didn't look at us
and say
well I don't know
he's a jerk
and he doesn't
fall very well
and he doesn't do
these things
and sometimes
he breaks his promises
he just gives
everything
for us.
This passage
is telling us
that if we have
a generous
savior
that we as his
followers
should be generous
also.
On December 8th
we're going to do
something
we've never done
we're going to
take an offering
December 8th
the church
and the staff
and the leaders
have identified
three or four
ministries
that we think
are doing amazing
amazing things.
so on December 8th
and I don't know
who gives what
in here
I know that the elders
we talk about
what we give
because we want
to be faithful
and we want
to be true
as we present
these things
and so you can
ask them
how much they give
and they'll probably
ask you how much
you give
so that's a fair
exchange
but I don't know
who gives what
but I do know
that it takes
about 200,000
Hong Kong dollars
a week
to keep everything
going in the church
and people's salaries
and outreaches
that we're doing
and training pastors
and all these things
but on December 8th
everything
100% of everything
that comes in
for that week
we're going to give
to those
ministries.
my prayer
is for all of us
as a church
as we reflect
on this passage
and we understand
what God
has done for us
if we understand
how generous
he is for us
that we
as his people
would be generous
towards those
around us
so that God
could use it
for his kingdom.
In God's kingdom
money is seen
very differently
than ours
he watches
everything we do
with it
we're not really
judged by what we give
but we're judged
by what we keep
and why we've kept it
and he always uses
little things
given in faith
to change lives.
Father we just
come to you today
and we thank you
for your goodness
and your grace
in our life.
We come as your people
and we look at this
passage of this widow
and we wonder
how many times
throughout the last
2,000 years
you have multiplied
those two leptas
those two slivers
how many times
you have multiplied
them for your kingdom
and done amazing things.
Lord help us
to realize
that you have been
so generous
and gracious
to us
for everything
and then all we have
is yours.
The Pharisees
didn't understand that
because they were
legalists.
the Sadducees
didn't understand that
because they just
couldn't care less
and they wanted
to party
and sometimes
we bounce back
and forth
between both
of those extremes.
Lord I pray
that we would see you
as you really are
but I confess
in my life
I confess
you have been
so abundant
and many times
I have squandered
those things.
I want to repent
of that.
Lord I pray
for our church
I pray that you
would forgive us
as individuals
and as groups
and how often
we've wasted
your resources
when you were waiting
to do amazing things
amazing things
if we were willing
to step out in faith
and trust you.
so we come
before you now
and we just pray
that you would
change our hearts
help us to see
your son
as he truly is
help us to understand
the depth
and the breadth
and the width
of the grace
and mercy
you've given to us
and help us
to be people
who are generous
because we serve
an amazingly
generous God.
We love you
and we pray
these things
in your son
Jesus name
Amen.