The Widow’s Sacrifice.

I’ve always heard of the Widow’s Sacrifice as a very cut-and-dry event in the Bible. A poor woman gives her all to God, even though it is small in the world’s eyes, and Jesus notices. It’s just a couple of verses in Mark and Luke. However, as God is apt to do when one begins to truly study, the Lord opened this passage up for me in a way that I’d never really seen before. I need to document it to remember. The passage itself is reallllyyyy small.

⁴¹ And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.

⁴² And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.

⁴³ And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:

⁴⁴ For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.

Mark 12:41-44

Background

When we come upon this scene in the Bible, Jesus is approaching his last moments of ministry with his disciples. By this point in time, what we celebrate today as Palm Sunday has already taken place. He has triumphantly ridden into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey as the people cried hosanna and laid down their coats and palm branches. He has cursed the fig tree and it has miraculously withered on the vine. He has flipped the moneychanger’s tables in the temple.
The Pharisees and Sadducees are becoming increasingly agitated, and in a few short days from this very moment, they will enlist the help of Judas Iscariot, and hatch a plot to take Jesus by night, where He will begin his final journey towards the cross.

Of course, in his infinite power, Jesus is fully aware of all that is about to transpire. He is fully aware of the agony that will come. He is fully aware that some of the people who greeted him with cries of Hosanna will soon again greet him with cries of “Crucify Him!” Knowing all of this, what does Jesus decide to do? If it’d been me, I’d of probably been dipping out. That would’ve been my cue to EXIT STAGE LEFT. However, thank the good Lord, Jesus didn’t do that. Instead, we find him sitting in the temple. He’s doing something really important. So important in fact, that the Bible records the account of what is about to transpire TWICE. Once in Mark and once in Luke. So as we begin, I want you to know that Jesus was teaching and people-watching.

Ya’ll ever people watched? It’s a fairly entertaining pastime. You can go to the beach, the mall, the ball field, downtown, or any other random place where people congregate and just sit down and watch. People are interesting. I learned this fact at a very young age. When I was a boy, I’d spend my summers helping my grandparents out on the family farm in Darlington, S.C. We’d work hard in the morning. Cutting grass, dissing up the garden, picking up pecans, working on tractors, planting flowers, and practicing our tennis swings with the carpenter bees out at the barn I can’t say I was the most mechanically inclined individual when we were working on those tractors, but I coulda gone pro playing tennis with all the practice I got knocking carpenter bees out the air with a racket! However, my favorite time of day was lunch. We got out of the hot sun, got in the car, and went to a little restaurant down the road called The Mayflower, where my grandparents were regulars.

They were so regular, they had their regular table, where they’d sit facing the front door, side-by-side, and talk about everyone who came in throughout our meal. That’s the thing about being married for over 50 years. You get bored talking about each other so you switch it up. They knew everyone, and they loved to people-watch.

⁴¹ And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.

Mark 12:41

So, right away, we see here that Jesus is doing some people-watching. But, he wasn’t watching them like my Grandaddy and Grandma.  The Bible says He beheld them.  The original word that was used there means to look with fixed eyes and see with attention. In other words, Jesus was locked in.  He wasn’t just casually glancing at the people walking in and out of the temple.  He was looking at them with purpose and meaning. And I’m not too sure He liked what He saw.  If we look a few verses above this at verses 38-40, we see Jesus speaking out against the showy, prideful, and deceitful antics of the scribes.  

³⁸ And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces,

³⁹ And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts:

⁴⁰ Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.

Mark 12:38-40

They went about in their fancy robes, wishing for people to draw attention to them in public. They had no shame about foreclosing on a widow’s house or making up a fake, long, ornate prayer in God’s house. It was all a show.

And, where we pick up this morning, we see some rich people putting on a show for Jesus. Verse 41 says the rich people were casting in MUCH. See them in your mind’s eye. They’re walking up to the offering plate, jingling a big ol’ bag full of silver. A little bit of a grin. A little side-eye to see who’s noticing. I’m exaggerating this a bit because I want you to fully grasp the heart attitude here. As we’ll see here shortly, some of these people are giving God leftovers of their riches, and they’re proud of it. There wouldn’t be a juxtaposition between the widow woman and the rich men if both were honoring God on the same level. Jesus wouldn’t have made a point to point out the difference if both were giving as they should have. Clearly, the woman has something figured out that the rich man doesn’t.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself here….

Go ahead and ask yourself while we’re still here on verse 41. What are you casting into the offering plate this morning? And no, I don’t mean your tithe check. I want you to think about Jesus beholding you. He’s looking at you with a fixed gaze, and all his attention is focused on you And I want you to honestly assess what you think He sees when He looks at you. What does He see when He watches you offer of yourself? Can I tell ya’ll I got chills when I started thinking hard about this. What does my Savior see when He looks at me?

Does He see a man striving to honor Him above all else? Does He see me putting Him above my career? Does He see me putting him above my pride? Does He see me putting him above my fleshly wants and desires? Or does He just see me putting on a show?

Are you putting on a show for Jesus, giving him the extras and the leftovers of your life? Or is the sacrifice You make for Him real to you? Is the relationship with Him real to you?

The average Christian’s nonchalance towards Christ’s sacrifice amazes me sometimes. Jesus offered the ultimate sacrifice for us. He suffered a blameless, agonizing death on the cross for us, and we think we’re okay with just offering Him an hour of our time or 10% in the offering plate on Sunday morning. We’ve got it twisted ladies and gentlemen. If that’s the extent of your relationship with Christ you’re fooling yourself.

⁴² And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.

Mark 12:42

The first thing I want you to note is that the widow came into the temple.  The Bible says “and there came a certain poor widow”. Even though she was destitute and even though she was poor, she still made a point to come to the temple to give her offering. 

There are people today who are angry with God for their life circumstances.  

• They are angry with God because of the state of their finances.  
• They are angry with God because of the state of their health.  
• They are angry with God because of the state of their family.

They use this anger as an excuse for why they can’t offer anything to God. It’s why they don’t want to be around God’s people or in God’s house.

The Bible doesn’t say for sure.  But, if we draw on the historical context of widows in this time period, we can assume with relative certainty that this widow was probably an older woman.  

• That old age probably was starting to affect her health, as old age often does.  
• The Bible says she was a widow, so we also know she’d had her share of grief and pain due to family issues resulting from the loss of her husband
• The Bible says she was poor, so we do know without a doubt that she wasn’t in a good financial state. It’s hard to make a proper currency conversion over 2000 years, but scholars say two mites were anywhere between a couple of cents and a couple of dollars in today’s money. If that’s all she had, she was in trouble.

So there she is, a woman most likely in a tough situation financially, physically, and emotionally. Even after all of that, she STILL comes to the Temple to give an offering to God.  

He’s beholding.

Remember how I said Jesus was beholding the people? I believe Jesus knew when that exact poor widow was walking up those steps outside, about to come in. He was watching for her, ready. He was going to behold her, just as he had the others.  But His response to her, as we’ll see in a minute, would be much different than his response to the rich people.

Before we get here though, let’s stop for some real-life application.  We’ve already discussed Jesus beholding us.  He’s looking at us intently to see how we will serve Him with the time and opportunities He’s allotted us.  He’s looking at us intently to see if our offering comes from a heart that desires the praise of Him or a heart that desires the praise of Man

Now, I want you to think about the idea of coming to the temple to offer to the Lord.  I’m not just talking about the church building either. There’s another temple. Stick with me here.  This is HUGE.

¹⁹ What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

²⁰ For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Have you realized YOURSELF, that you are here to worship God? That you are here to offer yourself to God. That you are here to serve and live for the Lord.

Verse 19 tells me that my body is the temple.  Verse 20 tells me I’m to glorify God in my body.  Put two and two together and I now know that I’m to glorify God in the temple.  I’m to come to the temple to glorify God through my offering to Him.  

Listen, He’s already bought me with a price in offering his only Son for me, so I have no excuse but to offer myself to him. The widow offered all she had in the temple so that God would be glorified and magnified in her. Evidently, He was glorified by this, and still is today, for here we are discussing this same event 2000 years later.

So… am I offering all that’s in me?  Am I offering my heart, my mind, my attitude, and my actions to glorify God? 

Let’s look at it from a different angle. You see, the widow wasn’t the only one who walked into that temple.  Earlier that day, Jesus walked in too.  And he’d spent the afternoon beholding people,  watching them give their offerings.  If Jesus walked into your temple today, and He watched you give your offerings to Him, what would He see? Would you even show up to offer anything, or would you let the cares and distractions of this world keep you away?  

It’s true that people lose sight of God because of misplaced anger, tragedy, hard circumstances, and guilt.  

However, the Lord knows it’s also true that folks today lose sight of God due to the pleasures of this world. We don’t have problems packing sports stadiums.  We don’t have problems climbing up in deer stands.  We don’t have problems wasting hours on social media, or gossip, or politics, or TV.

When you’re offering all of your time and attention to that pleasurable pastime, you’re telling God He’s not first.  When you’re offering all of your time and attention to that vicious vice in your life, you’re telling God He’s not first.  If He was to walk into your temple, what would He see?  Would you bring an offering?  If so, what kind?

What kind of offering?

⁴³ And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:

⁴⁴ For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.

Mark 12:43-44

You see, there are two kinds of offerings.  Offerings that are given from a place of abundance and offerings that are given from a place of want.

• The rich gave from a place of abundance. They already had their share for themselves set aside. They knew regardless they were going to get what they wanted
• The poor widow gave from a place of want. She was poor. She had nothing she could set aside for herself. She gave the Lord all of it.

By no means am I preaching you need to put your life’s savings in an offering plate. The Lord expects us to be wise and responsible with the blessings He gives us.

That said, God doesn’t want my leftovers.  He wants my all. That’s why all is underlined in my Bible in verse 44

When it comes to offering yourself to the Lord, you need to be all in.  You don’t need to be holding anything back from Him.  You don’t need to be holding onto anything else.  

Think about a ladder. I don’t know about you, but the higher I get up on a ladder, the tighter I want to hold on.

So… follow me here.. Self-sufficiency is like a ladder.  People use it to get a leg-up on life. We’re told independent, self-sufficient people are the ones who get the most success. If my sense of self-sufficiency is the “ladder” I’ve climbed to “elevate” myself in this life, it makes sense that the higher I climb, the more I think I achieve on my own, and the more I feel I do in my own power, it’s going to be harder to let go of that self-sufficiency.  

Sometimes God shakes you of that self-sufficiency. He forces you to let go of the ladder so to speak.

I vividly remember one time I let go of the ladder. Remember those carpenter bees I was talking about earlier? Well,  I remember one time I was up on a ladder out at the farm, emptying a bee jar trap bolted to the underside of a roof overhang.  I unscrewed the mason jar to dump all the dead bees out.  Then, because I’m intelligent, I got me a stick and decided to jam it through the bottom hole of the wooden top piece that the mason jar had been screwed into… just in case any dead bees were stuck up in there.

My smart self jammed that stick right up into a wasp nest that had formed inside.  They came POURING out of that thing, lookin’ for blood.  It must’ve been a million of ‘em. All I saw were wings and stingers folks. I LEAPED off that ladder, swingin’, sweatin’ and swattin’ and screamin’ like a baby.  I got me a running start in mid-air, just like Wile E Coyote.  When I hit the ground, I took off like a bullet.  Still got stung though. 
What’s the point Sam? It wasn’t hard to let go of that ladder when I realized I wasn’t gonna be able to fix that problem by myself. I decided real quick I wasn’t gonna be holding anything back.  I was going to take a leap of faith and go from there.

Similarly, God is going to bring people to the knowledge of Him, somehow, some way, someday, every knee is going to bow.  It’s better that we go all in for the Lord of our own free will now, and offer ourselves completely.

We should go ahead and make an offering like that of the widow, rather than like those of the rich people.  You need to ask yourself, how can I make the Widow’s Sacrifice in my own life?  For it was her, not them, who showed the greatest display of trust and faith in the temple that day.

Keep in mind, that those two mites weren’t going to fund an overseas mission trip.  They weren’t going to take the youth to summer camp. They weren’t going to pay for a new church bus or fund the Fall Festival Trunk-or-Treat…. but…

• Offering those two mites up was going to further force that woman to RELY ON GOD FOR HER SUSTENANCE AND SOLACE.
• Offering those two mites was going to be a visible example to others of her trust that God ALONE would provide 
• Offering her all was going to show Jesus that she was serious about her faith in God.

So all those kids out there who say, “I’m too young to offer anything to God”, you’re lying. In John 6, a boy offers Jesus his lunch and Jesus feeds over 5000 people with it. So all those old people out there who say, “I’m too old to offer anything to God”, you’re lying. In Genesis 21, God used Sarah and Abraham in their old age to bring Isaac into the world, through which the entire nation of Israel would come to be. All those hurting people out there who say “I’m too damaged to offer anything for God”, you’re lying. In Job 13:15, Job, after having lost all his possessions, health, and family, still offers God his complete trust. All those busy people out there who say “I’m too busy to offer anything for God”, you’re lying. In Luke 10:41, Jesus tells Martha, who’s bustling about and running here and there doing everything, that she would do better to offer her time and attention to Him, as her sister Mary was doing. All those poor people out there who say “I’m too poor to offer anything for God”, you’re lying. We see this widow doing it right here. All those sinners out there who say, “I’ve done too much in my past to offer anything to God”, you’re lying. In Acts 22:19, we see how the great apostle Paul, before he was saved, beat and imprisoned Christians. He held the coats for the men as they killed the first Christian martyr, Stephen. Joshua 2 shows the story of Rahab the prostitute. She changed her ways and the Lord used her in a mighty way.  She was King David’s great-great-great-grandmother. She was in the lineage of Jesus!

Ain’t nobody too far for Jesus.

At that moment that day in the temple, there was no fanfare.  There was no “HEY LORD LOOK AT ME”. This whole event probably only took a few seconds, and the Bible doesn’t say Jesus went up to the woman afterward to commend her.  But, I can assure you when she crossed the pearly gates, some commendation took place. Some celebrations took place.  Some “well done good and faithful servant” took place.

Christ’s standard of commendable offering is not our superfluity, but our deficiency—not what will never be missed, but what costs us some real sacrifice, and just in proportion to the relative amount of that sacrifice.

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 122.

So, I ask us today, what costs us real sacrifice? The widow’s sacrifice was two mites. What’s yours?  If you look at you’re life right now, what is God impressing upon you as your two mites?  What will cost you real sacrifice?  What’s that thing that would hit a little closer to home if you had to give it up?  What is the thing you need to give up for him?  What’s the thing that, if you gave it up, would require you to rely more on God today than you did yesterday?

There may be some here reading this who need to give up their running away from God.

•  You’re like Jonah.  You know who God is, you’ve seen His Power in your life, and you know there’s something He’s called you to do, but you keep running.  
• You’re more than happy singing a few hymns, saying amen, and throwing some money in the offering plate every once in a while.  But whenever you get that itch of the Holy Spirit telling you to do more, you push back. 
•  I honestly believe we tire ourselves out MORE by running from God than we would if we just did the work He asked of us.

There may be some here today who need to give up their desire to always be right. 

¹⁸ Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18

¹⁰ Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

James 4:10

• When we allow pride to fester in our lives, and when we allow it to come into our hearts, we begin believing we can call the shots. 
• This pride will eventually give way to arrogance.  Lots of bad things happen when that transformation takes place.
  • You’ll find you know more than your significant other, and you’ll begin to argue all the time.
  • You’ll know more than your boss and those work relationships become strained and frayed.
  • Kids think they know more than their parents and they go out and make dumb choices they’ll regret for the rest of their life. 

It all comes from a desire to be right.

There may be some here today who need to give up their desire to be liked.

¹⁰ For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

• We get scared sometimes about how people will view us.  It’s not necessarily a pride thing.  Rather it’s more a fear of rejection.  Deep down, everyone wants to be liked, and no one truly wants to feel alone. 
• Where we mess up is when we try to compare the companionship of God with the companionship of men. They are not equal.  A relationship with the Lord is far greater than any relationship here on earth.  When you sacrifice your relationship with God to be well-liked by some person here, you’ve made a mistake.
• We’re hesitant to stand on certain truths because we fear blowback from people around us. Can I tell you this morning that  The man, woman, or child who stands for God will never stand alone.  If He stood in the fire with Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego when they refused to bow to Nebuchadnezzar statue like everyone else, He can stand in the fire with you friend. 

There may be some here today that need to give up their independence from God. If you’ve never asked Jesus into your heart, and you’ve never had that relationship, you’ve spent your life apart from Him.  You say. “Sam, I didn’t ask Jesus to die for me”. Yes, and isn’t that the beauty of it? 

¹⁹ We love him, because he first loved us.

1 John 4:19

Before you knew Him, He loved you. Sin separated me from God, but Jesus gave His all on the cross, taking my place and taking my sin on Himself so that I might live in paradise with Him forever.

You’re included in the us in 1 John 4:19.  I am too.  I truly believe that, in His omnipotent power, there was a moment when Jesus thought of me, Samuel Howell, and He said, I love him, and I’m going to die for him.  When he took the sin of the world, he took my sin.  He took yours too.  The price has been paid.  Now, you must offer yourself to Him and take a step of dependent faith in saying that “Jesus is Lord and Jesus is enough and from this day forward I’ll live my life for Him, rather than apart from Him”.

If that’s you, and you know you’ve never accepted Jesus Christ, I’d love to connect with you and go through and go with you through the Scripture. I’d love to show you what it means to be saved.  Hit my socials. DM me. Email. Whatever it takes.

• Have you come to the temple? When Jesus beholds you in the temple, what does He see?
• Are you giving from a place of abundance (giving things you aren’t going to miss) or are you giving from a place of want (giving things that will cause you to rely on God further and further)
• Can you say you surrendered fully to Christ?  If not, today is the day to change that.

As we close this article, I ask you to earnestly seek the Lord. Ask him to reveal to you what sacrifice you haven’t given to Him that He wants.  Find your widow’s sacrifice.  Step further into your faith in God than you ever have before.  Seek to become more dependent on Jesus day by day.

Don’t simply hear. Do.