Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Ever feel manipulated when a preacher says, God is watching, as the offering plate goes by? Fact is, though, He is watching. Jesus was in the temple courtyard, watching as the rich made sure the crowds saw them give.
Then He peered intently at a poor widow who dropped her last two mites in the treasury. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, that widow had no idea she would become famous throughout history.
Dave, that makes me so excited. I have to say that I really do love this story, this account. Because you're absolutely right, God never shows us all the good that we do. She'd have been very surprised if she had discovered that preachers 2,000 years later would still be preaching about her as a great example. And you can go throughout history and you will discover that God, as I've already implied, He never shows us all the good that we do. We see only a little bit of it, but in eternity, we will learn that our impact was much greater than we ever thought.
Don't we have a generous God? At the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be introducing you to a brand new book that I've written. But for now, let's just listen to this message and let's rejoice with this woman and, of course, the reward that she shall someday receive in glory. I interpreted that Jesus is saying that there's a lesson here also for us and for the church.
For as long as the church endures, there is a lesson to be learned from this nameless widow. Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box, 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. Wow, she gave more.
It's interesting to contemplate. How did she give more? By the way, parenthesis, if her two mites were given compound interest, you know that compound interest is amazing.
Once you get to the higher sums, it's just something mathematically that you have to understand, but it explodes. Someone figured it out and I don't know that it's true, but over 2,000 years, those two mites with compound interest might be worth something like 24 with 19 zeros at the end. So who knows how much she gave as far as the heavenly calculator was concerned. Somebody else has said, well, you know how she gave more is that her story has inspired giving in the Christian church for 2,000 years and you think of all of the money that has been given because of her.
And I need to comment on that. This woman doing that had no idea that she was going to be part of the Bible. She had no idea that for thousands of years, preachers were going to be referring to her and using her as an example. She had no idea that that was going to happen.
Let me give you a word of encouragement. God never lets us see all the good we do, never. We get little glimmers of it, but the impact of the person's life going from now throughout all of eternity and that is to say their impact going even as far as eternity, we never know what impact we have. Some of you grandparents, you will not understand the impact that you had on your grandchildren until you get to heaven. This dear lady, unnamed, unsung, she didn't know that she was going to be held up as an exhibit of generosity for generations.
God bless her. But I think what Jesus probably just simply meant is her gift meant more because she gave from the heart and she gave sacrificially. It's probably what Jesus had in mind. That when we give from the heart extravagantly because we love, that means more to God than if we simply give because we're expected to or give out of our abundance as all of us do, including myself. Because most of us, and I include myself in this, have never given sacrificially in the sense of we had to go without because we gave.
Most of us fit into that category. But if we give sacrificially where it actually impacts our lifestyle and impacts what we have or what we don't have, now we're talking about a radical commitment of love and generosity. I think that there are two lessons that this dear widow has to teach us. First of all, giving reveals the heart, obviously. Giving reveals the heart.
This is found all throughout the scripture. That's why the Bible says that the Lord loves a cheerful giver. My friend, if before you put a nickel into the offering plate, you squeeze it so much that it turns red. Keep it.
All right. If we are not a generous people because God loved us, we shouldn't give grudgingly. The Bible talks about those who give grudgingly or of necessity. Have you ever noticed here at the Moody Church, we do not make it a requirement to tithe. We don't say to the new members coming in, now, if you want to be a member of Moody Church, you must tithe. No, we hold up the tithe as an example, as a benchmark, as a good rule to follow, at least to begin. But we don't make it mandatory.
I don't want people to say, well, see, you know what they are? They're forcing us to give because they need the money. As I mentioned last time, bad idea, bad idea, bad motivation.
No, we should be asking how much can I contribute? Because I love. Ultimately, it is a matter of love. Now, having said that, it is very interesting. You know, I began this message by saying that money always competes with God for our affections.
I'm really serious. It does. Because the more money you have or the more money you make, the more difficult it is for some people to give it away. The poor sometimes are the most generous because they know what it's like for other people to do without. So they are generous with those who are going through tough times. They give out money to the poor because they've been poor and they know they've been there and how bad it is. And poverty is bad, no doubt about it.
Very bad. I think, though, that what is one of the most interesting things is that all the statistics that I've seen and there have been all kinds of studies on this. They show that the less you make, the higher percentage you give. Now, that doesn't mean that the poor give more than the rich, because if you give 10 percent of $20,000 a year or $30,000 a year, it's not as much as five percent on a hundred thousand a year or $200,000 a year.
So the rich may give more in terms of the actual cash, but the percentage goes down. I don't know why that is, but our hearts are really interesting. There is a story of Dr. Criswell, who was for many years the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. I remember when I was there as a seminary student, I remember hearing Dr. Criswell preach. He, since that time, has gone on to heaven. But there's a story that he told about a young man who came to him, a young businessman, and said, Dr. Criswell, you know, when I began my business and was just making such a little bit of money every year, he said, I gladly gave 10 percent to the Lord. But he said, as my business has grown and has now become, you know, a multimillion dollar business and I'm making so much money, he said, I just can't tithe anymore. I can't give that much money to the Lord.
Dr. Criswell said, let me pray for you. So he put his hand on his shoulder and said, oh, God, I pray that you might reduce this young man's income. I pray, Father, that his business will shrink. Oh, God, bring it down to a size that is right whereby he can be faithful with what you've given him.
Truly amazing. The more some people make percentage wise, the less they give. Why? Money competes with God for our affections. And that's why the Bible says when riches increase, do not set your heart on them. And that's why it has often been said you should proportion your giving according to your income, lest God brings your income in accordance with your giving. But the bottom line is, it's always been a matter of heart. Always.
It isn't so that we can pay the lights and pay the salaries. It's always a matter of heart. That's what this dear woman teaches us. I think there's another lesson, though, inherent in here, because I have to look at the text again.
I can't just leave it the way it is. I have to ask myself the question now, this dear lady, God bless her, did she go home and starve? I don't know, but I don't think so. I think God took care of her. I think that when she stood there and she gave her two mites and she didn't know that Jesus was watching, this was not a show. She was not a zinger.
She wasn't blowing her trumpet. I think it was given out of love, but also faith to believe that God would meet her need. It's the kind of faith that you and I need in a time of economic uncertainty. It's the kind of faith that you and I need when it seems as if the whatever has been nailed down is being torn up and we don't know where the economic decline is going to end. At a time like this, we need faith and we need to believe.
You know, when you look at our bulletin, you can tell that as a church, we're in great financial need and we haven't cut back a lot of things yet, although we have some things in place where we are not spending money, even though we could use it and need it. But we don't know what the future holds. People say, Pastor Luther, are you nervous? Are you afraid? No, not really because I believe God is going to bring us through it, but we never know what sacrifices we'll make in the way. We never know where we're going to have to cut. And as leaders, we always have the responsibility to make those kinds of decisions.
But what we need is faith. Now, in order to illustrate, let me tell you that this past week I spent two and a half days in the state of California. Could I say parenthetically, it was just so gratifying. Maybe that's not the word to turn on CNN and see that it was 17 degrees below in Chicago and then walk out of the hotel dressed just as I am now, able to take off my suit coat later in the afternoon and enjoy the warm sunshine.
And I thought, I hope the people of Chicago never know that there is a place like California where you can do that. I was speaking at the Master's College. Many of you are acquainted with the ministry of John MacArthur. As a matter of fact, the tie that I'm wearing today was given to me by the school.
It is the official school tie. I told John I'd wear it in the pulpit on Sunday morning. The topic was suffering. I'd never been at a conference yet where I heard such messages on insight regarding suffering. Dr. John MacArthur and also Sinclair Ferguson were there speaking about suffering in a way that I'd never heard before.
But on Friday night before I spoke, they had a 20-minute testimony by Joni Erikson Tada. Now, many of you will be acquainted with her the moment I mention her name. But for those of you who aren't, 40 years ago, yes, it is 40 years ago, she dived into Chesapeake Bay and broke her neck and has been a quadriplegic for 40 long years. To give you an idea of how long that was ago, I remember when I read her first book telling her story sometime in the 70s when I was pastor of Edgewater Baptist Church.
It goes back a long, long time. If you know that she has a wonderful ministry called Joni and Friends, and some of our people here at the church, the Butler family, for example, have often attended her retreats and brought music in that context. But Joni was wheeled, of course, in her wheelchair and she spoke. And I want to give you a summary of what she said because it does relate to economics. She said when this accident happened, she had some very tough questions for God, not just questions like you might ask in a Bible study, you know, what do you think about this?
No, no, no, no. She had some tough questions. God, you say that you love your children. If you love your children, why are you so mean to them?
Why do you treat me like this? She wanted to die. In fact, she'd have committed suicide if she could have. But as a result of that, God brought her through that and gave her insight into suffering, the likes of which none of us could possibly fathom. I don't know anyone who ministers to so many millions of people and she's on the radio and she has had a lot of exposure to helping people. I don't know of anybody who does. Who ministers out of complete total brokenness. She says every morning she wakes up, she says God, I can't do this another day.
I can't. I say also that her pain is worse than it used to be. She said now it's to the very level it was when this accident happened. She said I live with chronic pain 24 hours a day. But at seven in the morning, the woman who's taking care of her comes in and begins the process then. And Johnny tells God I can't do this another day. If I'm going to do this another day, you have to do this. If you don't give me my strength, I'm just going to lie here.
I cannot do it. And this dear woman whom we shall call Mary comes in and begins to help Johnny to get out of bed, brushes her teeth for her, does everything. And as time goes on, Johnny begins to realize that God has given her strength for another day.
Now that's been 40 long years. People say Johnny, we'd like to pray for your healing. Can we pray for your healing?
And Johnny says sure. But first of all, I want to tell you what kind of healing you should pray for. She said don't pray that I'll walk.
In fact, early on, there were all these people who said God has shown me that you're going to walk here and so forth and it never happened. She said don't pray that I'm going to walk. She said pray for the healing of my soul. She said what 40 years in a wheelchair has done is it has given me a hatred for sin and I see how terrible it is. And she said my soul needs healing because she said I still struggle with pettiness, with self-pity, with a very, very narrow view sometimes of people, she said. She said pray that that will happen. That's more important than whether or not I walk.
Holiness is more important than happiness or wholeness physically. That's what she said. And then she said this. She said having a disability isn't the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is to have an impure heart. You remember Jesus when he was talking about lust said if your eye offends you, pluck it out and cast it from you. If your right hand offends you, cut it off and cast it from you. Well, if you cut out your right eye and your right hand, you'd be disabled. But Jesus said it is better to enter into heaven disabled having taken care of lust and the sin that is keeping you from faith. It is better to do that than to arrive in hell completely healthy and well after which of course you won't be. So she said the disability isn't the worst thing.
It's the sin in my heart that you have to pray for. And I just thought wow. But then she said this and this relates to economics. It relates to this woman.
It relates to the fear that we have of the future. She said what this did was it blasted me against God. I had nowhere to go except God wholeheartedly. She said it was like sand blasting to blast out all everything I've depended upon, everything that was important to me, whether it was my looks, whether it was my future, whether it was my career, all that was gone. I had only God. And she said I discovered that God wasn't mean.
I discovered that God cared about me. He is a loving beyond all words, she said. And she discovered that in the crucible of suffering.
But then she said this. She said Jesus seems much bigger to us and much more able when we are desperate. I wonder if our financial downturn might be given to us by God to teach us that Jesus is bigger than we realized and better than we realized and more trustworthy than we realized because we're in financial need and we don't know where to turn.
It's a final lesson I think this dear lady teaches us and that is this. What a beautiful picture of Jesus. I say a beautiful picture of Jesus because he also was rich.
He was rich the Bible says but he became dirt poor. And he came to live on this earth and to die on the cross so that you and I could be redeemed and he gave it all in extravagant irrational love. And because of that he gave what he had so that you and I might be saved. What a beautiful picture of generosity is our Savior and that's why we should be generous is because he's been merciful and generous to forgive us to make us heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ to give us all the spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ and because of that we too can trust and believe that the God who sees the sparrow fall is the God who will take care of us.
Hard times yes ask Johnny but is he loving is he kind is he trustworthy can we believe him though our wallets are empty and the answer is yes. Let us pray. Our Lord today we ask that you will help us help all those who came today whose focus has been on their need. Help them to see father that that you are with us in the good times in the tough times and when we don't know where to turn we ask that wholeheartedly will turn to you help us to see Jesus bigger because we're desperate. What prayer do you have to pray today whatever it is just simply say Lord Jesus Lord Jesus I give to you my burdens some of you need to give him your sins and if you do in faith you'll exchange it with his righteousness whatever God has talked to you about you do. Father hear the cry of your people in Jesus name amen. You know my friend this is Pastor Lutzer when I think of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on our behalf the question that you and I have to ask is simply this are we willing to make the same sacrifice in terms of giving our lives and giving our all to the Savior who gave us his all that's what we're called to do and we're living in a culture in which it is very difficult for us to navigate because we're not used to the darkness we are used to living in a country where we had a great deal of freedom where the government oftentimes sided with a Christian faith and now we begin to see a lot of conflict a lot of shadows.
That's why I've written a book entitled the Eclipse of God among other things this book challenges believers to draw a line in the sand and say there are some things we can do there are some things that we can't. For a gift of any amount this book can be yours here's what you do go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 that's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago to help you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Christians have bank accounts on earth but also accounts in heaven. They lay up treasures where moth and rust do not corrupt. Next time on Running to Win we'll learn why the long-term view is best. Investments in things eternal bear a return we cannot even imagine. We'll get an economics lesson as we hear about investing with your ROI in mind. Thanks for listening for Pastor Erwin Lutzer this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
