Treasuring The Master Series

Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Mark chapter 12.

How do you eat an Oreo cookie?

There are three classic approaches. One is to just bite right into it — top wafer, creamy middle, bottom wafer — all in one go. Raise your hand if you’re a biter.

The other is the “twist and lick” method. You twist the cookie apart, go straight for that double-stuff filling, and only eat the wafers afterward because, well, it’d be a shame to waste them. Raise your hand if you’re a twister.

Finally, there’s the dunk method. Raise your hand if you’re a dunker. All right.

Those are the real baptists.

Here’s the thing — sometimes we treat our favorite Bible stories the same way. We go straight for the creamy middle — the part we already love — and we forget to look at what comes before and after.

Most of us have done that with the story of the widow’s mite in Mark 12. We think we know the story. We’ve heard it in Sunday School, seen it in stewardship campaigns, maybe even quoted it to remind ourselves that “it’s not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice.”

But there’s a wafer on top. Just before this moment, Jesus condemned the religious leaders for devouring widows’ houses—using religion to enrich themselves.

And, there’s a wafer on the bottom. Immediately after, He predicted the destruction of the very temple they were standing in.

So the creamy filling is sandwiched between religious hypocrisy on one side and the recognition that nothing in this world lasts forever on the other. And right in the middle of it all is this story about a widow who gave all she had.

And the reason this story matters so much in a series on biblical stewardship is because every decision to give—to invest what God has entrusted to you—is always caught between two dangers:

• The danger of giving with the wrong heart,

• And the danger of giving to the wrong things.

Both of those break the heart of Jesus.

But giving out of sincere devotion—giving that trusts Him completely—delights His heart.

So with apologies to all the ‘twist-and-lickers’ out there, we’re going to bite into the whole cookie. We’re going to read Mark 12:38 all the way through Mark 13:2, and we’re going to talk about the kind of giving that avoids the dangers and delights the heart of God.

So please read with me:

Mark 12:38–13:2 ESV

38 And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces 39 and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, 40 who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” 41 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” 1 And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” 2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

The Context: Moneychangers on Monday, Taxes on Tuesday (Mark 11:15-19, 12:13-17)

You guys may or may not realize that this story happens on the Tuesday of Holy Week. And Jesus has already been very busy since Palm Sunday:

On Monday, He walked into the court of the Gentiles, saw the chaos of the moneychangers, and drove them out. It matters that this was the court of the Gentiles. This was as far as non-Jews who came to worship God could get in the temple, and they couldn’t even pray for all the donkeys braying and the lambs bleating and the coins clattering and the people haggling. Worship had become business. And Jesus wasn’t having it.

He quoted Isaiah and Jeremiah as He overturned their tables: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.”

In that moment, Jesus was confronting a system that was catering to the insiders while being indifferent to the outsiders.

Then came Tuesday — the day the Pharisees tried to trap Him by asking whether the Jews should pay taxes to Ceasar. They figured that if he said yes, they could label him as a boot-licker. If he said no, they could call him a seditionist. But Jesus saw right through them. He asked someone to produce a coin with Ceasar’s inscription on it. And he said, “Give to Ceasar what belongs to him, and to God what belongs to Him.”