Episode 1488: Out of Their Abundance

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1, 488 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:09] Grant Botma: I'm Grant Botma. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find work life harmony is key, and one way to be inspired to do that.

[00:00:27] is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:41] Scott Maderer: Sometimes like the widow, all we have is still not enough, but it's more than enough. And by giving up what we think we can't live without, that's when we find the freedom to truly live. And God will bless that response, that message, that heartfelt [00:01:00] giving. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:08] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:36] In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Mark 12, verses 38 44. I share how this reflects on how it's about relationships, not transactions in God's system. And I also share how the giving is more about our heart than math. Mark 12, verses 38 44 says, As he [00:02:00] taught, he said, Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets.

[00:02:11] They devour widows houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation. He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.

[00:02:32] Then he called his disciples and said to them, Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. This passage starts with Jesus calling out the scribes, the Pharisees, at the beginning of the text, and [00:03:00] the passage right before this, he's just endured a long chapter where they were being very adversarial.

[00:03:06] He was being challenged and questioned and sneered at for what the Pharisees represented his beliefs to be. And sure, he seemed to be up for the challenge and he was winning over the crowd. Here it is in verse 37. Mark says, large crowds were listening to him with delight. And was that delight?

[00:03:26] Because the crowds were seeing the power holders get their comeuppance. Were they happy that they were being called out and somehow or another getting taken down a notch? Maybe. Or maybe they were delightful, delighted because they were starting to realize and feel like, you know what we're getting some sort of affirmation that this relationship that we've got this transactional sort of methodology where we're forced to give and that sort of what we have to do to get God's [00:04:00] Is that somehow not really the truth?

[00:04:02] Is that really not the way it's supposed to work? Jesus was turning everything that they had been taught about how to get ahead in life upside down and maybe that connected with them in some way. They'd been taught that God works through deals. It's transactional. You do this and I'll do that. It's rather easy or simple in a way.

[00:04:28] You do your bit and maybe once in a while you do more than your bit. You pay a little extra, you get a better seat now at God's table, you get promoted, you get put up another level, put in some overtime, maybe really split hairs on the details of the law and eventually you'll get a nice long robe and watch everyone in the marketplace bow to you as you pass.

[00:04:51] That's how the world seemed to work. That's what they represented. That's how the Pharisees got to where they were. They did their bit. They served their time. They [00:05:00] did the work. Sure, maybe occasionally they foreclosed on a widow or two, but business is business, right? It's not personal. And to make up for it, look, they turned around and they gave these greats amounts that went into the offering box.

[00:05:16] After all, is it that what the church needed is more in the plate, more in the offering box? But then Jesus throws a monkey wrench into the whole works and says, Beware of this way of thinking. Beware of the attitude that it produces. Beware of what it does to your heart. Because it turns people into commodities.

[00:05:37] And we forget relationship in favor of status. And then he actually goes and takes a seat opposite the offering boxes. And you can almost feel the world weariness. As he watches this production of giving played out in front of him, he looks at the attitude of the giving and there's [00:06:00] plenty of attitude there in the temple, plenty of attitude displayed in front of the collection boxes.

[00:06:05] There were 13 of them and they weren't really boxes. They look like long metal trumpets. And you would put your money in the wide end and it would roll down to the other end where it dropped into a collection. And these were metal. So every time metal coins were dropped in, there was a clink and a clank, and you could hear it all over the temple courtyard.

[00:06:33] There's lots of attitude and lots of noise. If you've ever been in the airport in Las Vegas or in a casino, that clinking and that clanking and that sound of noise is what it would have sounded like. And there were probably these unspoken contests as each person vied to clink down more coins, make it rattle louder.

[00:06:56] And in the midst of all of this, a [00:07:00] poor widow makes her way to the offering box. As a counterpoint to this loud clinking and clinking of gold and silver coins being dropped into the boxes, plink, plink is heard. As two copper coins are dropped in by the widow. Hardly worth noticing. Compared to the clank of gold and the clink of silver, that plink of copper would sound rather pathetic.

[00:07:28] And, these are pennies. They're hardly worth bending down to pick them up out of the gutter. They're called lepta in Greek, or mites in the King James Version. But here's the strange part, as she dropped them in, Jesus said, look there, that poor widow has put in more than all of those clinkers and clinkers.

[00:07:50] You can imagine the disciples going, wait, what? No! Matthew, the tax collector, whipping out his phone, or his abacus, and [00:08:00] pulling out a calculator. ready to give Jesus a simple lesson in accounting and math. And he says, wait a minute. Two lepta are just a bit above nothing. It's 00001 percent of what all these guys over here with the big cars and the long robes and the fancy houses are giving.

[00:08:23] And Jesus says, no, you're looking at it wrong. They put in the extra that they had. They put in what they didn't need anyway, and they put it in not to give, but because they wanted to buy prestige with it. But she put in what she had, what little she had left. They gave out of abundance, and she gave out of abundance.

[00:08:51] Her living. She gave all. She gave her whole sustenance. And maybe Matthew listened, understood, [00:09:00] and began to look at it a different way. Began to say, I've got to work to a different scale. I've got to use a different math. The widow gave. No one expected her and no one would have blamed her if she didn't give and yet she still gave.

[00:09:15] She dug deep down into her bleak existence and gave all she had. She sacrificed the bit of grain, a meager meal. She sacrificed what she could have purchased with that money. Even though it would have been very small, it still would have been something. Maybe something that would have kept her one more day.

[00:09:36] But she dug deep enough and she felt her generosity. It's the exact opposite of giving from abundance. It's giving enough to hurt, to feel. And often with stewardship, when we talk about it, maybe once a year the church talks about money and we just all kind of hope and wait for it to get over so that we can talk about hope and faith and love and all of the real stuff.[00:10:00]

[00:10:01] Except the truth is that stewardship, that's What you do with the talents, with the money, with the resources that God has given you, that is part of the real stuff. A big part of it. After all, if your faith, if your Christianity gives you a warm feeling once in a while, but never touches what you do with your money, with your resources, with your time, with your talents, with your gifts, then you really haven't been listening to what Jesus is saying.

[00:10:31] If being Christian is about following the rules, not swearing too much, not drinking too much, not doing this or doing that, or following that rule or this rule, and obviously we're going to pick and choose, and the rules that we follow are the most important ones, not the rules that somebody else follows.

[00:10:50] But if all of that happens, and yet you're never given to, moved, given, Out of scarcity, out of more than you really can, if you've never given [00:11:00] sacrificially, then maybe you've missed the point. If following Christ means for you saying certain things, believing certain things, doing certain things, following the rules, but doesn't mean that we're accountable for our belongings as much as for our actions, then we're just looking at the surface.

[00:11:21] And most of us spend way too much time on that surface level, debates and discussions and feelings and hymns and what color is the carpet and what songs do we sing. We're dealing with the top soil, the outer limits of our responsibility. And Christ calls us to dig deep, to go beyond the surface. Deeper than easy answers, beneath the comfort and the confidence that, you know what, all is right in the world and I deserve the privilege and the place that I have.

[00:11:53] The truth invites us to dig deep into our attitude for giving and to realize that sometimes, like the [00:12:00] widow, all we have is still not enough, but it's more than enough. And by giving up what we think we can't live without, that's when we find the freedom to truly live. And God will bless that response, that message, that heartfelt giving.

[00:12:20] Thanks for listening.

[00:12:26] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook. com slash inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on [00:13:00] Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there.

[00:13:09] Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.