Abusing the Poor B

This woman was part of a system that took the last two cents out of her hand on the pretense that this was necessary to please God, to purchase her salvation and to bring her blessing.

She was manipulated by a religious system that was corrupt. Make human needs come first with God. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. If you've spent much time in a church, you've likely heard about the widow and her two mites, probably a sermon about being generous with your money. Or perhaps you've used that passage as a proof text when arguing the merits of sacrificial giving. But is that what this passage is about?

John MacArthur's answer might surprise you today on Grace to You. He's continuing his study titled, Mishandled, Setting the Record Straight on Frequently Abused Verses. If you have your Bible, turn to the book of Luke, and here's John.

Luke chapter 21. Now, if you are beginning to say to yourself, here goes another message on sacrificial giving, you might be right to expect that because that is the universal application of this text. It is always used to tell us we ought to give the way this widow gave.

So what just exactly is this about? The assumption in interpreting this as a model for Christian giving is that Jesus was pleased with what she did. It doesn't say that, absolutely doesn't say that. It doesn't say that Jesus was pleased with her gift. It doesn't say Jesus was pleased with her attitude.

It doesn't say anything about His attitude. In fact, in fact, I think what she did displeased Him immensely. I think it was more than displeasing. I think it angered Him. I think what she did angered Jesus.

Let me put it this way. The system that had developed in Judaism abused poor people and it abused them on a spiritual level. Anyone who withholds money from needy parents in order to give it to God is in direct disobedience to God and is dishonoring God's Word and substituting a man-made tradition for God's Word. Basic human needs come first with God before religious offerings. Listen, God's Law was never given to impoverished people, but to help them.

Man was not made for the Law but the Law was made for man. We would conclude that this woman was part of a system that took the last two cents out of her hand on the pretense that this was necessary to please God, to purchase her salvation and to bring her blessing. She was manipulated by a religious system that was corrupt. This is not an illustration of heartfelt sacrificial giving that pleases the Lord. This is not a model for all of us to follow. Jesus never expect that. In fact, He told a servant who had very little, you should have put your money in the bank and earned interest because you need that to meet your own physical needs. Something very different is going on here. This is not about Jesus honoring giving, this is about a victim of a corrupt system who is literally made absolutely destitute, trying to live up to that system and earn heaven. Let's go back to the account now in Luke 21.

You'll see how this unfolds. Verse 1, and He looked up. Now stop there. That assumes that He was...what?...looking down. Good, that's lesson one in exegesis. If you looked up, you had to have been looking down. That's really important, really, really important. Mark in a parallel passage, Mark 12, 41 to 46 or so, says He was sitting down.

Now you need to understand what's going on here. In verses 46 and 47 at the end of the chapter, you have that brief, brief statement about His beware of the scribes speech. But the full speech is in Matthew 23, okay? The full speech is in Matthew 23. He had just completed that speech. At the end of a whole day of talking, teaching, confronting, interacting, conflict, an exhausting day, a whole day in the midst of massive crowds, jostling, listening, interacting, that in itself, the sheer physical effort in itself would leave Him exhausted. But then, in addition to the physical exhaustion, He is given this...this denunciation, this damnation speech that is recorded in Matthew chapter 23.

You need to look at it for a moment. It's really...it's the low moment in His life. After all the years of incarnation, all the years of ministry, all the sermons preached, all the questions answered, all the miracles done, it all comes down to the leadership rejecting Him and the nation following the leadership and also rejecting Him. And so He gives this diatribe, this blistering maldiction against the false religious leaders. And He uses the word woe repeatedly which means curse, damn, consign to judgment. Matthew 23 it appears in verse 13, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Verse 14, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. 15, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

16, woe to you, blind guides. Verse 17, fools and blind men. Verse 23, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. 24, blind guides. 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Blind Pharisee. Verse 27, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. 29, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. And it all comes down to verse 37, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, stones those who are sent to her.

How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. It's over, judgment. And it's going to be that way until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Judgment will fall and last until Christ returns.

This is the sad final message. The conclusion is devastating, not only devastating to the leaders, devastating to the nation, but devastating to Jesus. This is where all His efforts end, long judgment until the Lord's return on this nation. So it's not just the physical weariness, it's the agonizing sad reality of what our Lord says. He feels deeply the sinful rebellion and unbelief of Israel leaders and people. He shed tears when He walked into the city, chapter 19 verse 41, and saw it, He wept. And He's still weeping.

Preaching these words would be heart-wrenching. All these 33 years and this is how it ends, an exhausting emotional experience for Him. It was over.

No more calls to the Kingdom, no more invitations to salvation, only a pronunciation of damnation that would last two thousand years and send generation after generation after generation after generation of these chosen people into a godless eternity. After those tragic words, the acknowledged end of salvation, hope for the nation He had come to His own and His own received Him not. He must have been exhausted. He must have been spent.

He must have been heartbroken. And so, Mark says, He was sitting and His eyes must have been looking down as He contemplates the damning religion of Judaism and the fact that the temple where He sat which He had earlier cleansed was so corrupt, its religion so ungodly that it along with the city of Jerusalem and the whole nation of Israel had to be totally destroyed and kept under judgment for millennia. So there He sat in moments of thought before He turns to pronounce the judgment for all His disciples to hear.

No wonder He was looking down. And when He looked up, Mark 12.41 says, He saw opposite, the treasury observing how people were putting money into the treasury. Jesus had said in Matthew 6 that you were to do your giving in secret. But the religious system had developed a very public, prominent way to do it and Pharisees came along and had trumpets blown announcing their arrival to give, according to Matthew 6. So He looks up and there He sees the people coming, the treasury and He observes how people were putting money into the treasury.

What is the treasury? Well, the court in which Jesus was sitting is a very, very large open court in the temple area. It was called the Court of the Women. There was an inner court where only the men could go, but this is the court where everyone could go, men and women. Jesus taught here, as indicated in John chapter 8. In fact, He taught on the light of the world on that occasion.

And He taught in the Court of the Women, the great open court because it was where everyone could come. He calls it the treasury because there was a section of it that the leaders had designed as the place you give your money. They had set up thirteen shofar trumpet shapes.

You know what a shofar is, that's a horn. They had set up thirteen of those in which people dropped their money. And each of them had a sign on the bottom of it indicating exactly what that money was to be used for. Old shekeldoos, new shekeldoos, bird offerings, wood, incense, gold, free will, they all were labeled and people would go by and they would in very open courtyard publicly put their giving on display. The treasury is actually the word gaza phulakion from two Greek words, gaza meaning treasury, phulake meaning prison.

Once you dropped them in, they were held in there. This is the real heartbeat, folks, of false religion, right? This is the real center of false religion. The center of false religion is the treasury, folks.

It's all about the money. They do it, says Peter, for filthy lucre. Luke 16, 14, Jesus said, the scribes and Pharisees were lovers of money. We know the Sadducees who ran the temple franchises were lovers of money because Jesus said, you've turned My Father's house, a house of prayer, into a den of robbers as they extorted money out of people for sacrifices and coin exchange. False religion is always about the money. When you get to the treasury, you get to the heart of false religion. And so as the wearied and spent and sad, heartbroken Savior lifts up His eyes and watches, He sees the normal course of false religion, poor, deceived souls putting their coins in, trying to buy blessing and salvation. And He sees, verse 1, the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. Rich is plousios in the Greek, it simply means they have a full supply. Those with enough, not mega-rich, very rich, super-rich, just they had enough.

Those who could put some in and have some left, the non-poor, people who could make offerings and still live enough to live. In fact, Mark 12 41 says they were putting in large amounts, pola, much. They were putting in much.

They were putting in substantial amount and they still had plenty left over. The religious system demanded money. It demanded money to make the guys who were in charge of it comfortable and prosperous and wealthy. And that's what false religion always, always does. This was the pattern then. Here they were in the open court where everybody could see, coming along dutifully following the prescriptions and the demands of their leaders in the self-righteous acts of giving to buy favor from God, literally to purchase their salvation.

And for the most part, Israel was a prosperous country, people did okay, they could afford it. But in watching this, the Lord sees one widow. He saw a certain poor widow. The word is penikron meaning poor and needy but not totally destitute.

It's way down there but it's not the bottom. It would mean somebody with very, very little, penikron, a certain poor widow putting in two small copper coins, lepta, lepta, Jewish coins, the smallest coinage they had. She puts this coin in there. Now wait a minute...a poor widow? Does that sound familiar to you? My mind immediately goes back to verse 46 of chapter 20, doesn't it? Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love respectful greetings in the marketplaces and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets who devour widows' houses...who devour widows' houses. They build their success monetarily on the backs of widows.

Wow! Our Lord indicts them for their severe abuse of widows. Along with the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the scribes had a system that abused the poor and the defenseless for whom they had only disdain. They viewed any poor widow as being under the judgment of God, that's why she was a poor widow and they would aid God in making life tough for them to punish them for whatever sins God was punishing them for. Furthermore, widows were women and women were second class and Pharisees every day prayed, Lord, make me not a Gentile or a woman. And because they were widows, they were defenseless and easy prey.

What do you have here? You have a destitute widow then? One of the ones just discussed in verse 47.

How could you not make that connection? Here is just a couple of sentences later, an illustration of a poor widow who is being devoured by a religious system. Her last two cents, her life, she gives to this system dutifully along with everybody else, trying to live up to the system, trying to buy her salvation in an act of charity in a hope that it will earn her favor with God, she gives up her last two small copper coins, smallest coin.

She dropped two of them in one of those thirteen shofars. That was all, nothing said about her attitude, nothing said about her spirit, nothing said about whether she did it in desperation or devotion, whether she did it in legalism or love, doesn't say anything about that. The Lord doesn't commend her, doesn't make her an example, doesn't validate what she did, doesn't say it was a worthy spiritual act that greatly pleased Him. All He said was, this religious system is preying on widows. This cost her more than everyone else.

She put in relatively comparatively more than anyone. Yes, the religious leaders were devouring widows and the more desperate they became, the more they needed, they thought, to buy God's blessing. Belittled by the establishment because they were thought to be in that state because of divine punishment, second-class women, they were defenseless, easily exploited and the system exploited them to the max. Took the last two cents of that poor woman and it was all, the end of verse 4 says, she had to live on. It was literally her life.

She would go home and die. Now Scripture is full of commands and instructions for the people of God to take care of widows, is it not? There are warnings all throughout Scripture, to care for the poor, care for the widows and do not abuse them. The real tragedy that struck our Lord was the abuse of widows taking place in the name of God in the temple, the temple of God.

They had turned it into a den of robbers and they were robbing those who had the least. It is ugly exploitation of widows in the house of God in the name of God. Verse 2 says, a certain poor widow, Penicrous, poor but not Patokas. But then Jesus says, verse 3, this poor Patokas because once she gave up the last two coins, she went from Penicrous to Patokas, destitute, nothing. She gave up all her life. Cost her...this religious system cost that widow her life. She's going to go home and die.

Do you get the picture? Jesus isn't commending her, she's a victim. He's not proud of her. He's not making her an example of sacrificial giving. This is an absurdity. He is observing the corruption of the system that is going to be destroyed under the leadership of these corrupt condemned leaders.

They're exploiting the most defenseless, the most impoverished. Jesus certainly is not saying she gave her last cent and that's what you should do, of course not. He doesn't want you to give up everything you've got and go home and die. He's given us richly all things to enjoy. It says nothing about percentages, nothing about proportional giving, nothing about giving with the right spirit, nothing about the measure of the gift is what you have left, nothing about giving up everything and living on faith.

That's not here. He's observing the false religion that preys on the weak and the desperate and the defenseless and holds out hope to the hopeless if they just give their money. I think Jesus was not happy. I think Jesus was angry and that's why He says in verse 6, as for the things which you're looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down. And the disciples say, when's it going to happen?

And He says, it's going to happen and He describes it in the remainder of the chapter. Isn't this obvious? If you saw a widow give her last two cents to some religious organization in the hope that she could purchase salvation, or purchase blessing, or buy healing, or buy prosperity, you wouldn't commend her, you'd want to stop her and you'd want to shut down that religious system that preys on the desperate. This act did not please our Lord. She's simply been taught and she bought into a system that destroyed her.

No praise is given of her act or her attitude. She's caught in the corruption of the system at the hands of those wretched leaders. She has given her last coins to a false religion. Jesus is angry and that's why He'll destroy this den of robbers.

Judgment came, 70 A.D., and it continues now on that temple, on that city, on that land until Jesus comes again. Listen to James 1, 27, this is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God to visit orphans and widows in their distress. True religion does not abuse the poor, it ministers generously, graciously to their needs.

Isn't it amazing? Of all the little things...of all the little things that could have been the trigger to set off the destruction of the temple, it was one illustration of an abused widow that our Lord puts on the pages of Scripture. Woe to you who abuse women, widows, the distressed, the downcast, the poor, the sick with your lying promises to get their money.

That's false and it will be destroyed. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, continuing a series here on Grace to You titled, Miss Handled. John, a question occurs to me that I'm sure a lot of our listeners have and it's this. If some of the most well-known and popular verses in Scripture are so badly and so often mishandled, how can anyone, especially a Christian who's never attended seminary or Bible college, how can he be sure he's interpreting the Bible correctly? There are people who would say, well, look at all these differences of opinion about those texts. That's proof that we can't really know for sure what the Bible means.

Well, I'll tell you what it is proof of. It's proof of the fact that you can get the Bible wrong. Every aberrant, every unorthodox, every heretical teaching that's ever appealed to Scripture is proof that you can get it wrong.

In fact, it's more likely that you get it wrong than get it right because of the required diligence to get it right. But look, the Bible is revelation and that means that God is revealing truth there and he didn't reveal it in some kind of obscure way. I'm reading a biography of Martin Luther and one of the attacks that Luther made on the priesthood in the 1500s was that they had these bizarre interpretations of Scripture that had nothing to do with the grammar, nothing to do with the words. They were allegorical. They were mystical. They were fantastic.

I think they called it fantasticism or something. They were just bizarre things, nothing to do with what the Bible really meant. So you can get it wrong.

It's been misinterpreted constantly. That's why we are told we have to rightly divide the word of truth. Having said that, the assumption is that God has given us his word and we can know how to interpret it accurately.

It takes some effort, but it's worth the effort for sure. I want to mention a free booklet, How to Study the Bible. This is a good starting tool. It will tell you how to get to the meaning of the Bible, and the meaning of the Bible is the revelation. So there are going to be four steps. This little booklet points you in the direction of reading the text, interpreting the text, meditating on the passage, and even teaching the Bible to others. Strategies you can use in your own study of God's word, a practical guide for everybody from a brand-new believer or someone who's been a Christian a long time, to feel confident in coming to the true meaning of Scripture. We'll send you a copy of How to Study the Bible free of charge. We just want to get this in your hand, free to anyone who requests a copy, call, write, email us today.

Yes, do. This booklet helps you develop skills you need to study God's word and experience profound spiritual blessings from its truth. To request your free copy of How to Study the Bible, contact us today.

Our toll-free number here, 855-GRACE, or you can order from our website, gty.org. The book How to Study the Bible starts with a look at why you can trust the Bible, and it includes an overview of important terms like inerrancy and infallibility. The booklet also shows you how to bridge the gaps of history, culture, and language. Again, How to Study the Bible is yours free.

All you have to do is ask for it. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. And if you want to put the principles you learn into practice, let me suggest you pick up The MacArthur Study Bible. It has detailed introductions to each book, dozens of maps and charts, and the standout feature, 25,000 study notes from John, covering virtually every passage of Scripture. It's an all-in-one theological resource, and it's available in hardcover, softcover, and premium goatskin. To order The MacArthur Study Bible, call 800-55-GRACE or shop online at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for remembering to pray for this ministry, and thanks for tuning in today. Be here tomorrow when John continues his series called Mishandled, with another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.