Generous People

Text: Mark 12:38-44

Focus: Giving

Function: To help people be generous with mercy

Form: Bible Study

Intro: Last week, we began the November study of Generosity. Last Sunday, Generous Grace, next week, Generous Resurrection, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Generous God, and today, we will look at the result of God's generosity, Generous People. God's Generous People.

It starts with God.

It does indeed start with God's grace.

In one way, if one was to try to place one central theme to most of the parables, then the central theme would be this: “Since God has given mercy to you, you must give mercy toward others.”

Must? Or should? Or will?

If we must give grace, if we should give grace, if we have to give grace in order to receive grace, then we haven't been given grace at all.

Grace is free.

Grace is God's expression of God's generosity and God's love.

And you know that.

You know that the only part of what we call “The Lord's Prayer,” in the 6^th chapter of Matthew that Jesus explains is the part about forgiveness. And Matthew sort of describes like Jesus is giving us a contract for forgiveness. A contract is an agreement between two parties whereby both parties agree to certain actions, services or payments in exchange for something from the other party.

In this case, the Lord's obligation is to forgive us for all our sins as His part of the contract. And, our part is to be just as generous with forgiveness to every person that hurts us.

If it is merely a contract, then, the moment we choose not to forgive, we place our own selves outside of God's mercy because we refused to give the same mercy back.

The parable of the 10,000 talents is an example that may seem exaggerated. But it isn't exaggerated when we think of what it would actually cost to ransom a soul. There is no amount of money. But, for the example, a talent would have been about 15 years wages for the average working man. So, the man was forgiven a debt of 15,000 years wages.

The money owed the man, the money that he refused to forgive, was a lot, a year's wages.

I know that I would be really upset of someone stole a years salary from me. But we are talking 15,000 years compared to one year of labor.

Jesus makes the amount absurd to emphasize the fact that no man or woman can actually ransom their own soul. That, my friends, is the gift of God.

All of us would indeed be angry if we lost a years wages to someone for no good reason. We work hard for our money.

But God has given us so much more.

And, Matthew makes it sound like it is indeed a contract that we might very well fail at.

As a matter of fact, I don't really know anyone who is perfect in their ability to forgive. There may be, I know that almost all the Christians I know are trying, but even in that, we need God's generous grace.

So, is it a contract that we can fail at?

Are all doomed?

And what about the text for today?

What does the story of the widow's two mites tell us about generous people?

Well, let us look at the context. Jesus explains the resurrection and then the scene changes to the Temple. Jesus points out the religious leaders who do their religion for a show.

He warns them of being fake about giving, trusting, serving and loving.

I mention this because generosity is a response, a love response, to the generosity that God gives us.

And it is simple, God gives to us and we respond by giving to others. And remember, we cannot out give God. We can't.

So, it takes place in the temple and we see this woman giving her last bits, all that she has to live on.

And we assume that this is good, that she is praised because she chooses to live by faith and she gives away all that she has because of her love and devotion to God.

But maybe we should re-examine that.

They are in the Temple and Jesus first criticizes the whole idea of this abusive religious system that is more concerned for buildings and appearances than the people involved.

The Chapter breaks are not part of the original text.

The passage starts with criticism of the religious leaders, and then Jesus goes into the temple building itself.

This woman gave all that she had to live on, in an act of faith, toward a temple that Jesus prophecies will not stand in 50 years.

And indeed, in 70 AD, that temple, one of the world's ancient wonders, it was more fantastic than Solomon's temple, that temple, all that money, time, effort and the widows 2 cents, are all destroyed.

Could Jesus have been praising the building? Or, was He praising the woman's faith? Or was he condemning the false generosity of those who making huge gifts from their excess while the woman gave all that she had.

There is a big difference between sacrificing our excess to show off for others and giving what we need to live on because of our love and devotion to God.

I have no doubt that God provided for the needs of this woman who gave everything.

But, I am not sure that Jesus calls all this a good thing. Jesus praises the woman's devotion while at the same time He decries the religion that seeks opulence instead of helping the poor.

As a matter of fact, because of the context, condemning the leaders of this opulent religious system immediately before the story, and then the prophecy that the very temple she sacrificed, maybe even her own life for, was going to be destroyed seems more of an indictment on religion that does not focus on the hurting and suffering of the poor.

I'll let that sink in while we go back to the generosity of the woman.

I have had the privilege of serving the poor in many different places. I have spent a lot of time with Bittesweet ministries and Gilbert Romero in Tijuana. I have spent a lot of time in Haiti. I have spent a lot of time in the ghetto of Atlantic City, NJ. And, one of the things that I have noticed, that is noticed by everyone who comes in to work there and who also has their eyes open to what is going on spiritually is that the poorer people are, percentage wise, they are almost always more generous.

Maybe because they know what it is like to do without and they care. Maybe because they have worked as hard and as intelligently as they can and for some reason or other, bad luck has happened to them and it didn't turn out so well, or maybe because they really have nothing else to lose and losing 2 cents is just as hopeless to them as losing 10,000 talents. I don't really know why. But they are.

This woman was completely generous. Maybe the religions system that took her very money to live on to build a building while people are starving to death in its shadows is to be clearly indicted in the story,

Or maybe the woman had complete faith and was generous to a fault.

I know this, every time I experience the magnitude of God's grace, God's Spirit, She lives inside of us, and She compels us to give back as we have received.

Now, this passage is about money, but it has much, much more to do with life than money.

God's people are generous with God's grace.

One of my favorite books is Les Miserables. And M, the mayor is caught stealing red handed from the Priest at the Church. The Priest tells the man who caught him that he didn't steal, but instead it was a gift, and in order to prove God's generosity, the Priest gives M, even more silver.

He buys his soul with generosity. And God takes his soul. And M becomes the same man of generous principles as God.

It is our reaction. We give because God has given to us. And when we give, just like the widow, we give trusting that God will provide.

Now, about the Religious system that exploited the woman's generosity. Obviously that is wrong. So,

I am glad that the woman gave. I am glad that they accepted her gift because by giving, she also got to participate, on even a higher level than the rich who were giving out of their abundance instead of their livelihood, because she too, got to participate. It wasn't the amount given that is praised, it is the willingness to give, to participate for the glory of God instead of her own glory that excites me about her.

This is what it means to us. God provides. We cannot outgive God.

I started Bible College while Kathy was pregnant with our 3^rd child. I went to school full time, and worked a few jobs part-time. It was hard work and we were dirt poor. Those were good times because they had the result of making my wife and I generous. But one year, one of the couples that Kathy babysat for fell on some really hard times. So, we decided to give $50 to them.

Someone gave us $100. So, we gave $200 to someone else. And someone gave us $500. So, we gave away a car to the first family that had none. And someone gave us $1,000 and finally we decided that we could not out give God.

We didn't give in order to get. We gave because we saw a need. And, I have not tempted God with that trick again. One cannot trick God into giving. I am pretty sure that the events of someone giving back to us was a life lesson given to a couple called to be ministers of the gospel.

But the thing is this, God's people are generous.