California, Virginia, and myself, our thanks to all
of you for this week together.
Good food, yes, but fellowship, sharing the Word
of God together.
We just had a good week.
I hardly believe the week's over and we're
on our way home tomorrow, but thanks for
letting us have this week with you.
And we stick our name on your prayer
list.
We're going up to California in June.
We're moving there.
I think it was pretty obvious that I
enjoyed those services in the lounge these last
three mornings.
I have to admit, I felt much more
at home there than I do here, and
I'm hoping.
So I'm going back to that kind of
work.
I'm going back to teaching in a Bible
school.
I'm going up to the California Center for
Biblical Studies, a very grand name for Culver
City Bible School, and we'll pick up duties
there this coming September, but we're expecting to
move there in June.
So we'd value your prayers for us and
for the work at the school there as
we go.
Now I've got three books.
I was going to pick up something light
tonight that you would just sit down and
enjoy reading, and then I found three books.
No, I just have to take these three.
I needn't tell you the name C.
H.
Macintosh, need I?
No.
Everybody wants his notes on the Pentateuch.
That's fine.
They're good, but give me his miscellaneous writings.
That's just a matter of taste and what
has helped, and they're all in one volume
now, The Macintosh Treasury.
If you don't have it, get it.
Delightful reading.
I don't know whether the story's apocryphal or
not, but someone has once said to have
asked Mr. Macintosh why he didn't write like
J.
N.
Darby, and he said, I write to be
understood.
If you've read Macintosh, you'll appreciate that.
Now last night I mentioned W.
E.
Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, which
we don't have in the bookstore, but which
are in order.
But a work has been collected of Mr.
Vine's writings called an Expository Dictionary of Old
Testament Words.
So if you already have his Expository Dictionary
of New Testament Words, then this is a
good companion volume to give you some of
the riches of the Hebrew language in the
Old Testament.
And there are several copies of this in
the bookstore.
You'll find it an invaluable tool for your
study of the Old Testament, just as his
work is an invaluable tool in the study
of the New Testament.
And I was delighted to see H.
R.
Ellison's little booklet, The Mystery of Israel.
It's an exposition of Romans 9 through 11.
Now don't turn it off.
Don't turn off your hearing aid until I'm
through.
Romans 9 through 11 is a happy hunting
ground for the doctrine of election.
And that is not why Romans 9 through
11 was written.
It deals with the problem of the nation
of Israel and the purposes of God.
And Mr. Ellison sees that.
And it is one of the finest discussions
of Romans 9 through 11 I have read.
I think it's one of the finest because
his theological position happens to agree with mine.
So naturally I think this is a good
exposition of Romans 9 through 11.
And he also has added to this revised
edition, The Nation of Israel and the Epistles
of the Ephesians.
This is a fine little book.
It'll open up.
If you have been in the habit of
reading Romans, and you come to the close
of chapter 8, and then you jump over
to chapter 12, verse 1, because 9 through
11, you can't make ends or tails out
of it.
Get this.
And you'll discover 9 through 11 is part
of the heart of the Epistles of Romans.
Great little book.
And there are several copies of that in
the bookstore as well.
Now let's turn again tonight to the Gospel
of Mark, chapter 12.
We'll begin reading at verse 35, and I'd
like to read through the end of the
chapter.
Mark chapter 12, verse 35.
Now we've hopped, skipped, and jumped all through
the Gospel of Mark, and we've come down
to the last week of our Lord's life
on earth, as far as his public ministry
is concerned.
And we are on Tuesday of Passion Week,
the week he died, and it's toward the
close of the day, and he has spent
most of that day discussing questions with people
who opposed him.
And when all the questions are finished, he
poses one.
And that's where we pick it up in
verse 35 of Mark, chapter 12.
And Jesus answered and said, while he taught
in the temple, How say the scribes that
Christ is the Son of David?
No, that's the wrong emphasis, as you read
through it.
How say the scribes that Christ is the
Son of David?
For David himself said by the Holy Spirit,
The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou
on my right hand, till I make thine
enemy thy footstool.
David therefore himself calleth him Lord.
How is he then his son?
And the common people heard him gladly.
And he said unto them in his doctrine,
Beware of the scribes who love to go
in long clothing, and love salutations in the
marketplaces, and the chief seats in the synagogues,
and the uppermost places at feasts, who devour
widows' houses, and for a pretense make long
prayers.
These shall receive greater condemnation.
Most long prayers in public do.
And Jesus sat opposite the treasury, and beheld
how the people cast money into the treasury,
and many that were rich cast in much.
And there came a certain poor widow, and
she threw in two mites, which make a
farthing.
And he called unto him his disciples, and
saith unto them, Verily I say unto you,
this poor widow hath cast more in than
all they who have cast into the treasury.
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.
A brother here in the congregation who shall
remain nameless has today been drawing my attention
to a comic strip, Dagwood.
If you saw it in this morning's paper,
two little children come in behind Dagwood's chair,
with Blondie sitting over in the other chair,
and they raise a question about who is
boss, husband or wife.
Dagwood will look silently over at his wife,
and then he turns back to the two
kids, and he whispers to them.
And as they walk out, the fellow is
saying to the girl, See, I told you,
the husband is the boss.
But there's a great deal behind that cartoon.
And in our society, a great struggle goes
on in all spheres of it, who is
boss.
And I think our society is deteriorating to
the point that every person is his own
boss, and we recognize no authority but ourselves.
Every question that was thrown at our Lord
on Tuesday of Passion Week has to do
with the area of authority.
Four questions, and then he asked a final
question.
But every last one, all of them, including
the question he asked, has to do with
authority.
If we were to go back and look
at the first of those questions at the
end of the previous chapter, we discover that
the chief priest, the scribe from the elders,
come to him on Tuesday morning when he
returns to the temple.
And you remember what he did on Monday
of Passion Week when he cleansed the temple.
On Tuesday of Passion Week, when he returns
to the temple to resume his teaching in
Solomon's Court, the chief priest, the scribes, and
the elders who controlled the worship and the
conduct in the temple, meet him.
And they have a question for him.
By what authority do you do these things?
We are the ones who control what goes
on in the temple.
What right do you have to come in
and clean out the court of the Gentiles?
We set that up.
We control the temple.
By what authority do you do these things?
And when he has met that question, he
is faced with another one in which a
coalition of Pharisees and Herodians, and the only
thing that united them was their common hatred
of Jesus.
Theologically, they were as wide apart as you
could be.
Their whole aims, goals, purposes, methodologies were as
different as night and day.
But they united in a common hatred of
Jesus Christ.
And they face him with a question, is
it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or
not?
And it's another question about authority.
And he is faced with a third question
when the Sadducees come to him.
The Sadducees who did not believe in resurrection,
nor spirit, nor angel.
And they raise a preposterous story that tends
to discredit the idea of physical resurrection.
His response indicates that everything is based upon
the authority of Scripture.
And then an honest lawyer.
Yes, there are such things.
An honest lawyer.
Of course, the lawyer, that word in first
century Palestine meant the one who interpreted, officially
interpreted the law for people, the Ten Commandments.
And the civil law of Israel, and the
religious law of Israel.
He was a scribe.
And he came to the Lord and asked
him, what is the greatest commandment?
And our Lord's response indicates the authority of
God.
And then in his own question, it's bound
up in David's address to the Messiah in
the 110th Psalm, in which he calls the
Messiah Lord.
Jehovah said unto my Lord.
And all five of these questions have to
do with authority.
And they begin with the authority of religion
in the temple in Jerusalem.
And then we move from the temple in
Jerusalem to Caesar's palace in Rome, and we
have a whole question of civil authority raised
by the Lord.
There's the question of the authority of the
Scriptures in the question raised by the Sadducees.
And in the question raised by the lawyer,
there is the whole authority of God himself
in the totality of one's life.
And finally, there is the authority of the
Messiah.
And I'd like to put these five questions
together tonight, and just look at what was
asked, and how our Lord responded.
And then see the whole thing as it
focuses on two kinds of people at the
close of the chapter.
The first question brought by the leaders of
the temple had to do with authority in
the temple, which was the focal point of
the religion of Israel.
At least it was the focal point for
the ritual of Israel.
The focal point of the religion of Israel
was never the ritual, it was the law.
But nevertheless, the focal point of the ritual,
what we would call the religious side of
Israel's life, was the temple.
And they came to the Lord and said,
by what authority do you do these things?
And his response was a question.
He was always forcing people to think.
No pat answers.
Things that make you think.
You have to stop, and you have to
think.
He said, I'll ask you a question.
You answer mine, and I'll answer yours.
The baptism of John, was it from heaven
or of men?
Now remember that these religious leaders of the
people of Israel had as one of their
functions to protect the people from false prophets.
On more than one occasion, an official delegation
came from Jerusalem up into Galilee to check
out Jesus himself.
And people were warned, this man is a
false prophet, he is empowered by Satan.
They had already decided the question, where he
got his authority, it came from Satan.
So, if they are able to distinguish God's
authority from demonic authority or from human authority,
then the question is John the Baptist.
Did God send him?
Or was he self-appointed as a prophet?
You know, when you begin to play fast
and loose with truth, you get yourself in
trouble.
Four years before, these men had played fast
and loose with God's truth in John the
Baptist, and now it's catching up with them.
And because they played fast and loose with
the truth of God, they are unable now
to answer this pointed question that really challenges
their authority as the religious leaders of Israel.
If they were to say his authority came
from heaven, they never bowed to his preaching
of repentance, and they were never baptized by
him in Jordan, which would mean they were
publicly confessing they had refused the command of
God.
So they couldn't say that.
At the same time, they knew that the
mass of people accepted John as God's prophet.
Now remember, this is Passion Week.
Passover is coming.
Jerusalem is packed with pilgrims who have come
to the Passover.
Masses of them would have been disciples of
John the Baptist.
And if these religious leaders dare say one
word against John the Baptist, they're going to
have a riot on their hands.
Another cup.
They really can't answer either way, and he
leaves them in their dilemma.
Neither will I tell you by what authority
I do these things.
Why not?
They had already shown themselves incapable of deciding
on the authority of heaven.
Not really.
They had already shown themselves to be rebels
against the authority of heaven.
And remember that John the Baptist was the
forerunner of Jesus.
If they couldn't decide the authority of the
forerunner, how are they going to decide the
authority of Christ who followed him?
Who has authority in that temple?
What did our Lord say to them on
the previous day when he had cleansed the
temple, quoting from Isaiah?
God is speaking in Isaiah.
My house shall be called a house of
prayer for all nations.
Who has authority here?
God has authority.
This is not your house, this is God's
house.
And when they wanted authority in the temple,
on the evening of this very day, our
Lord will turn from that temple and say,
your house is left unto you desolate.
You want authority here?
Have it.
But you've got authority in an empty house.
If it's God's house, that temple, God must
be the authority.
If you're the authority in this house, then
it's your house and God means.
That of course is true of any local
church.
If we exclude certain people from our fellowship
whom God has brought into the body of
Christ by regeneration, then there's no use saying
it's his church, it's ours.
We have refused his authority.
He has clearly spoken about that, and we
have refused his authority.
It's not his house, it's ours, and it's
going to be empty.
It doesn't matter how many people are there,
he won't be there in a temple.
I remember years ago, not too many years
ago, listening to a couple of very intelligent
black Christians who were livid with being excluded
from a white assembly.
Their response was, you can call it what
you want to, but this is only your
private club.
And he was right.
In the temple, in the church, the authority
is God's, not ours, it's his.
We don't set up the rules, he does.
We are his servants to obey his rules,
not to set up ours.
And the whole question of religious authority comes
down to that.
It is God's house.
He rules it.
Ours is only to obey.
Whether we like it, whether we don't, has
nothing to do with it.
Ours is only to obey.
But if we were to move to the
second question, which has to do with civil
authority and the right of seizure, the Pharisees
and the Rhodians come together, and as I've
suggested they were mutual enemies, united by the
common hatred of Jesus Christ.
Isn't it strange how he unites people?
Hatred of him will unite people, and love
of him will unite people.
You have just as diverse people within the
fellowship of his immediate disciples.
Pharisees and Herodians were no more opposed to
each other than publicans and zealots.
Tax collectors and zealots.
Tax collectors who worked for Rome, and zealots
who were the underground, who would split your
throat or burn your field if you served
Rome, who were working as an underground to
free Israel from the bondage to Rome.
And yet our Lord takes Matthew the tax
collector and Simon the zealot, and he pulls
them together into his band of twelve apostles.
Hatred for Christ can unite people, and so
can love for Christ.
There aren't any differences among us as strong
as the differences between Matthew the tax collector
and Simon the zealot.
Simon would cheerfully have split Matthew's throat, given
half a chance.
The Lord Jesus Christ brought them together.
I don't care what our differences are, what
our problems are, what our feelings are, how
diverse we may have become, as long as
we are looking at each other and the
wrongs in the other person, whatever it is,
yes, we are going to be driven apart.
And I dare say if there were sometimes,
there were side-long glances between Matthew and
Simon in that band of disciples, and I'm
not sure how long it took Matthew to
trust Simon.
You know, I guess for a while there
he was feeling a knife between his ribs.
Every time he turned his back, what pulled
them together?
Was their love for Jesus Christ.
That submerged their differences.
Again, it all depends what you emphasize.
If you are looking at each other all
the time and finding all the faults in
each other, or are we seeing the glory
of our Lord Jesus and being pulled together
around him?
It's too bad on this occasion it was
hatred for Christ that pulled people together, but
he's the focal point.
One way or the other, love for him
or hatred for him, he's the focal point.
And these two hostile groups came together to
try to trip him up.
And they showed him, or asked him the
question, whether it's lawful to give tribute to
Caesar or not.
We are God's people.
To give tribute to Caesar is to acknowledge
the control and the authority of Caesar, a
Gentile king.
We are God's people.
Our only king is God.
Now, is it lawful to give tribute to
Caesar or not?
Now, seemingly he's on the horn of the
dilemma.
There's no way to answer this question without
getting in trouble.
If he says, yes, it's lawful to give
tribute to Caesar, he has all the nationalistic
spirit of Judaism against him.
If he says, no, it is not lawful
to give tribute to Caesar, then he's going
to have the authority of Romans.
Which is, of course, what they want.
One way or the other, to destroy him.
And he simply asks for a coin.
That's not because of his poverty, but because
he's in the temple, and the only coins
you could use in the temple were Jewish
coins.
We looked at that the other night.
And so they need to go to the
money changer's table and get a Roman coin.
And he holds up that Roman coin.
Whose image and superscription is on this?
Caesar's.
All right.
Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
And then he adds, give to God what
belongs to God.
If you use a coin with Caesar's image
on it, you are already acknowledging the authority
of Caesar.
That coin belongs to Caesar.
It doesn't belong to you.
Then you simply give back, is the word
he used.
You give back to Caesar what belongs to
Caesar.
How do you know that coin belongs to
Caesar?
Has his image on it.
That's how you know it belongs to him.
So give it back to him.
And then when he adds, and to God,
what is God?
What is it that bears the image of
God?
We ourselves.
Then give back to God what belongs to
God.
I should not withhold from Caesar what bears
his image, nor should I withhold from God
what bears his image.
And there may be implied in his answer,
that had you first of all given to
God what bears his image, you would not
now be in the position of having to
give to Caesar what bears his image.
But the third question with which he was
faced had to do with resurrection, and that
fantastic story about this woman who had all
these husbands.
They all died one by one, and she
survived them all.
And then finally she died, much to the
great relief of any surviving brothers who had
married her, you know.
This is a dangerous woman to marry.
I don't know how much insurance these fellows
had, but nevertheless, if there were eight brothers,
I'll bet that eighth one breathed a great
sigh of relief when she died.
But it was the law of leverage marriage
in the Old Testament.
The living brother was obliged to marry the
widow of a brother who died, in order
that children could be raised up to the
name of the dead brother, and the inheritance
that had been divided in the days of
Joshua would not be lost to the family.
Well, they didn't have any children, and they're
all dead.
Now, in the resurrection, whose wife will she
be?
All seven had heard a wife.
I rather expect them to say, you take
her, I don't want her, man.
But whose wife shall she be?
Our Lord says, your problem is you don't
know the scriptures, nor the power of God.
You don't know the scriptures.
And he goes back to the Pentateuch, which
is the Bible, part of the Bible in
which they based their doctrine, the first five
books of the Old Testament.
And out of the incident of the burning
bush, on the authority of what is written
in scripture, he preaches physical resurrection.
Had I been faced with a question like
that, even knowing that they accepted as prime
authority the Pentateuch, I don't think I would
have turned to that passage.
The incident of the burning bush, God making
a statement to Moses, I am the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Okay, fine, that identifies you, big deal.
So what?
What does that have to do with resurrection?
Every word of scripture was authoritative for our
Lord Jesus.
God didn't say, I was the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He said, I am the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.
And all the promises I made to those
men I will fulfill.
All those men died in faith.
They laid hold of promises that would never
be fulfilled in their lifetime.
And they acted on them.
And God is still their God, and he
will still fulfill his promises to them.
And on that basis, Jesus says, there's going
to be a physical resurrection.
God is the God of the living, all
live under him.
The authority of the word of God and
the teaching of our Lord Jesus.
That settles the question, period.
That was it.
The word of God had spoken.
Your problem is, he says, you don't know
the scriptures.
In my judgment, that's the problem with most
theological problems.
We don't know the scriptures.
This good scribe comes to our Lord and
asks, which is the greatest commandment?
And he's an honest man, he really wants
to know.
His heart has been stirred as he's listened
to this man answer these questions.
And our Lord responds, Dear O Israel, the
Lord our God, the Lord is one, and
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, and
thy neighbor as thyself.
Everything he says hangs on that.
And that man makes a very positive response
to that statement.
He saw the significance of what he heard.
He saw it.
He saw that all the religious ritual on
which they had put their emphasis was of
lesser priority than these two great summations of
the law.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.
I want to say that to myself as
I come to the Lord's Supper.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And you can go through the ritual without
doing that.
And when I leave, I want to say,
thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
And if coming from that table does not
send me out in acts of love for
my neighbor, the whole thing is in.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, and
thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
And there is no way to separate those
two.
It seems to me liberalism broke them in
half and tried to take the one, thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
And it seems to me fundamentalism broke them
in half and took the one, thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And we are just as wrong for taking
the vertical alone as they were for taking
the horizontal alone.
What God has joined together, let not man
put asunder, whether he's a liberal or a
fundamentalist.
And God has joined that double summation together,
and you cannot separate them.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, and
thy neighbor as thyself.
That's the authority of God over the totality
of my life.
Now finally, and I'm sorry folks, we will
get through this, our Lord asks the question,
if you had asked any Orthodox Jew of
what line is the Messiah to come, there
was no question.
He was to come of David's line.
He was to be the line of the
tribe of Judah.
Anybody could have answered that.
And then our Lord says, that's not the
real problem.
How can the Messiah, or is this man
Jesus who came from the line of David,
how can he be the Messiah?
That's not the real problem.
People think that's the real problem.
How can this man Jesus of Nazareth be
the Messiah?
That's not the real problem.
The reverse is the real problem.
In the 110th Psalm, David says, Jehovah said
unto my Lord, sit thou on my right
hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.
And they all acknowledge the 110th Psalm to
be Messianic.
And in that Psalm, David is calling the
Messiah his Lord.
That establishes who the Messiah is, David's Lord.
And if we really wanted to reason from
it, it establishes the deity and eternity of
the Messiah.
The real problem is not how to get
this man Jesus to be the Messiah.
How in the world are you going to
get David's Lord to be David's son?
That's the problem.
I hope you see that problem.
My Lord, David addresses the Messiah, already existing
as David's Lord.
How are you going to get that exalted
being to end up being David's son?
And they've never thought of it.
And they couldn't answer him.
And we know the story of the miraculous
conception, the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus.
I mean his miraculous conception in the womb
of a virgin.
That's the real miracle in his virgin birth.
And we know in those tremendous words of
Paul in Philippians chapter 2, how the eternal
Son of God took our humanity in the
womb of a virgin and became human without
ever ceasing to be God.
He became human.
And David's Lord became David's son.
Now the process is not that one who
was David's son then became David's Lord.
No, no, no, no.
No.
The real miracle is one who was already
David's Lord condescended to become David's son.
There was no problem in getting David's son
exalted.
That's not the problem.
The problem is in getting David's Lord to
be David's son.
But who is that Messiah?
Let's never forget that.
Long before he was David's son, he was
David's Lord.
And we do not begin with Bethlehem.
We begin with eternity.
And all the questions of authority that have
been asked on that day have got to
find their focal point right here.
And until I settle the question of the
lordship of the Messiah, the lordship of Jesus
Christ, I am in no position to settle
any other question of authority.
That is the key question of all of
us.
And when we talk about our Lord Jesus
Christ on earth, we must never forget He
was Lord from all eternity.
He became David's son.
He never became Lord.
Does all that have relevance to life?
Oh yes.
Two kinds of people at the close of
this chapter.
The scribes, the religious authorities, who loved to
have all their authority displayed.
They were really great big fish in a
very small fish bowl.
And they didn't realize it.
We were talking about this at the dinner
table the other day.
And it's not to disparage this area you
know, but Keystone Heights is a very small
town.
There are people who are very prominent in
Keystone Heights, right?
If we were to take those people and
transport them up to the six million of
Chicago, they'd disappear.
They wouldn't be prominent in Chicago.
It all depends on the comparison, where you
are.
They wouldn't be anybody in Chicago.
And we go strutting around like peacocks in
our very little spheres of influence.
Drop us out in the great wide world
nobody ever heard of.
But now carry that to its extremes.
Put us in the presence of God, the
creator of the whole universe.
And the problem with the scribe was, though
he strutted in the temple and the synagogue,
he had never been in the presence of
God.
Here on the other hand is this insignificant
widow, never knew that our Lord was watching
her, comes into the court of the women.
And there were the various chests into which
the offerings were put, marked for different functions
and purposes.
She has two coins, and that's all she
has, everything she owns.
One goes into one chest and the other
goes into the other, and she slips out
unnoticed, unknown, except noticed by the Lord.
And her action is the living answer to
every question that was raised that day.
She acknowledges the authority of the temple in
her relationship to God.
She has no problems with the authority of
Caesar, because she doesn't have any of his
coins.
She obviously knows the authority of Scripture, that
there's going to be a resurrection.
She's willing to give her total living and
trust the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And the authority of God, thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
soul, mind, and strength, and thy neighbor as
thyself.
It's completely speculation, you understand that.
But as others have speculated, I wouldn't be
surprised if one coin didn't go into the
box marked for the temple, and another coin
went into the box marked for the poor.
And she balanced the two commandments.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.
One might go in there.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
The other might go in there.
And in that simple act, she answered all
the great theological questions that the professionals had
raised, but never practiced.
And our Lord took note of what she
did.
He warned his disciples against the scribes, and
he told them to watch, see what she
did.
And he held her up as he did.
Now look, we all, we need that so
much.
We are so impressed by wealth, aren't we?
We are.
We're impressed by wealth.
People who give millions to the Lord's work,
they get their names on buildings, and if
you give so much, you get it on
a plaque.
And we are impressed by that.
And it's not to take away from what
they have given.
But we may discover when we stand before
our Lord that his arithmetic is not like
ours.
Our Lord said of this woman's two mites,
she has put in more, and the way
he has expressed it, than everybody together.
And Mark notes that the rich have cast
in much.
And our Lord says in my arithmetic, when
I add up the sums, those two mites
count for more than all the wealth that
has been put into that treasury today by
all these pilgrims.
How so?
They gave of their abundance.
Didn't hurt them.
It was of their abundance.
What was left over?
How in the world can you acknowledge the
authority of God and of his word when
you keep what's left over?
Is that all the authority God has in
my life?
She, on the other hand, put in everything
she had.
Her whole living.
She put her life in those coins.
That's what God was looking at.
Not the amount.
God is never impressed with the amount.
What he is impressed with is the sacrifice.
Let me close by asking you a question.
In the commercial market of the world, how
much would God's greatest gift be worth?
Let's pray.
Oh our Father, we thank you for that
great sacrifice of our Lord Jesus on the
cross.
The Lord of glory, eternal son of God,
came into our world and offered himself in
the humiliation and shame of that crucifixion as
a sacrifice for our sins.
Deliver us from pettiness.
Deliver us from grasping after things.
And we pray that the lordship of Jesus
Christ will be the dominant factor in our
lifestyle, in our attitudes to each other, in
our thinking about the church, our thinking about
the world, and our thinking about ourselves.
We pray in his name.
Amen.