THE TRUE MEASURE
Posted by Angella Diehl, Webmaster on November 3, 2021 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: November 3, 2021 from Luke 21:1-4
Theme: We can learn some important lessons from the widow who gave two small coins.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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We’ve just finished our study of Luke 20. The focus of that chapter had been the opposition that our Lord received from the religious leaders of the day. Their great characteristic was hypocrisy. But now—at the beginning of Chapter 21—we find a story of sincerity. It’s a truly heart-warming story—one that comes as a welcome relief from the stories of the hard challenges and confrontations of the previous chapter.
By this point in the story, our Lord had entered into the temple. He came into it as the Son of His Father—and therefore the rightful Lord of the temple. And as He sat in the temple of His Father, He observed the activities that went on in it.
In Luke 21:1-4, we read this:
And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had” (Luke 21:1-4).
This is a story that shows us that our Lord doesn’t evaluate things in the same way that the people of this world do. As we’re told in 1 Samuel 16:7,
“the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
Men may look at the greatness of the gifts that are given; but the Lord looks into the hearts that do the giving. And it may be that Luke intentionally included this story where he did in his Gospel in order to present yet another contrast to us. As we look ahead in Luke 21, we see that our Lord once again shows that He evaluates things in a different way than we do. Verses 5-6 say;
Then, as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, He said, “These things which you see—the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down” (vv. 5-6).
The Lord was not impressed with the beautiful outward appearance of the temple. Rather, He looked at the hearts of the people that were in the temple. And because they had rejected Him at His coming—and were about to be crucified by them—then the outward beauty of the temple didn’t ultimately matter. This introduces our Lord’s long discourse on the Mount of Olives about the impending judgment of His people that we will be reading about in verses 7-36.
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Let’s begin, then, by considering this brief, heart-warming story in detail.
Luke began in verse 1 by telling us that our Lord was sitting in the temple area—perhaps taking a time of rest after the challenging conversations He had just had with the religious leaders. Because He was in a place where He could see people placing offerings in the treasury, scholars believe that He would have been sitting on a bench in what was called ‘the Women’s Court’ that was located on the eastern half of the temple area—next to the Holy Place of the temple. Within this area were thirteen trumpet-shaped receptacles. People would come into the temple area and cast their donations into these receptacles; which were sometimes set aside for specific causes. In Mark’s Gospel, we’re told that “many who were rich put in much” (Mark 12:41).
Jesus was able to see this going on because it was a somewhat public act. And it may even be that people sometimes made a little bit of a show in the manner in which they gave. In Matthew 6:2—in the Sermon on The Mount—Jesus warned;
“Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward” (Matthew 6:2).
And so, Jesus sat in the temple area, He looked and saw what people were putting into the treasury—and also how they did so. And in verse 2, we’re told “and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites.” A widow, in that day, was among the poorest and neediest of people in the community. There were no pension programs or life insurance policies; nor was there much in the way of work that a woman could do to provide for herself. A widow was without any support, and was therefore truly in great need.
And yet, as other people were placing their sometimes-great gifts into the treasury, our Lord saw her put in two ‘mites’. This was a very small amount of money. In the original language, this coin was called a lepton—which was the smallest copper coin used in the land at that time. (It’s close to the idea of what we think of today as ‘a penny’.) It’s hard for us today to estimate the value of ancient coins accurately; but consider the following: According to Mark 12:42, it took two lepta to make a quadrans; and according to Matthew 10:29, it would take one assarion (which was worth four quadrans—or eight lepta) to buy two sparrows. Sparrows were a bit like ‘fast food’ in those days. So this means that two lepta wouldn’t even have bought her a whole sparrow. She had enough perhaps for only one Sparrow-McNugget.
Isn’t it interesting to notice that she put in two small coins? Jesus said that these two coins constituted all that she had to live on. We weren’t there, of course, and so we can only speculate on this. But if you were her, isn’t it possible that you would have only put one coin in and kept the other coin for yourself? Perhaps that’s what she did at first. It may be that she even held on to that one coin for a moment or two. But then, she completely resigned herself to God and put the other coin in also. Now, with both coins in, she herself had nothing.
In the original language of this passage, two different adjectives are used to describe this widow. First—in verse 2—we’re told that she was a certain ‘poor’ widow; and in that case, the word that is used is penās. It’s the word from which we get the English word ‘penury’—which means ‘extreme poverty’. It was a word that was sometimes used to describe someone who was so poor that they had to earn their livelihood by hard labor. But after she gave those two remaining coins into the treasury of the temple, Jesus then referred to her in verse 3 by a different word. He used the word ptōchos; which refers to someone who is so poor that they are completely dependent upon the alms of others. By giving these last two coins, she went from being penās to being ptōchos; or as we might translate it, from a ‘pauper’ to a ‘beggar’. What a sacrificial act this was!
But that’s when the Lord Jesus used her as an important object lesson. In Mark’s Gospel, we’re told that He called His disciples to Himself to point their attention to her. In Luke 21:3, Jesus said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all …” That may have been a great surprise to them. It may even have been a great surprise to them that a widow put in anything at all—because she may have been completely unnoticeable to anyone else but the Lord.
Some have taken Jesus’ words to mean that she gave more than any single one of those rich givers. But that’s not what Jesus was actually saying. What He really meant was that she had given more than the sum total of all the gifts of all those rich people put together. This was something that would have been so astonishing to the disciples that Jesus would have had to preface it by saying, “Truly …!” And how could such a thing be? Jesus explained in verse 4; “for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.” They were all able to give a portion of what they had; and after their giving was over, they had plenty left to live on. Life would have gone on pretty much as it always had for them. But she put in everything she had—all that she had to live on. She literally gave herself away.
And the Lord Jesus noticed this—and called it to the attention of His disciples. We’re not told what happened next. We’re only speculating here. But doesn’t it seem unlikely that the Lord—who saw her tremendous gift—would have then let her go away in complete destitution? Doesn’t it seem just like our Lord that He would have then sent a couple of His disciples after her—in some private way—to give her what she needed? After all, it was Jesus who said in Luke 6:38;
“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38).
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Now; let’s briefly consider some lessons we can learn from this.
First, let’s remember that our Lord pays attention to how we give. Just as He watched the people giving—and even as He gave special attention to the gift of a poor, almost unnoticed widow—He watches how you and I give. He watches us in tender love, of course. But when it comes time to give to the cause of His kingdom in some way, He observes how we do so. He sees what we give, and He sees what we keep. He watches the attitude of heart with which we give, and takes note when there is a genuine attitude of reverence and devotion toward Him. He sees when we give in a hurried and thoughtless way, or sees when we give in a prayerful and well-planned manner.
He leaves the matter of giving to us. But with all of this in mind, we should take the words of the apostle Paul to heart when he wrote;
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work (2 Corinthians 9:7-8).
Second, let’s remember that our Lord measures the value of a gift in a way that is different than we do. We value it in terms of the dollar amount. But our Lord measures a gift in terms of personal devotion in the heart. This woman gave much less than the others in terms of dollar value; but our Lord measured the value of her gift in terms of the personal devotion that was in her heart—demonstrated by the fact that she gave everything she had.
It’s that kind of giving that the Lord Jesus values. He doesn’t measure the gift by the cost of the gift itself. He made all things; and He Himself has need of nothing. Rather, He measures the value of an offering by what it costs us as the ones who give. And the widow’s gift is the kind of gift that pleases Him—the kind in which we give ourselves completely over to God. The apostle Paul wrote of some who had given a great gift to meet the needs of other believers; and said
that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality. For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing, imploring us with much urgency that we would receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God (2 Corinthians 8:2-5).
That’s the kind of giving that our Lord greatly values—the kind in which we first give ourselves to Him. And wouldn’t it be right to also extend this beyond the giving of money, and also to the giving of time and service? We may not feel like we have the kind of talents and abilities that others would value. But when we see the need—and do what we can—the Lord looks upon our hearts. He greatly values our service—imperfect and seemingly meager as it may be—when it is truly given with our whole heart.
And let’s learn one more lesson: that our Lord isn’t impressed with the mere outward appearance of things. As we will now go on to see in our study of Luke 21, not even the beautiful, ornate, humanly-impressive buildings and stones of the temple were able to save it from judgment when the hearts of the people within it were not right with Him. What He wants most of all is that we truly have our faith in Him, and are trusting what He has done on the cross for us, and are born again by His grace, and are living before Him without hypocrisy and with true sincerity.
May we—by God’s grace—remember that our Lord does not measure things as men do … and may we make sure to be on the right side of His evaluation!
