Open your Bibles if you will to the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. We're going to finish this twelfth chapter today studying verses 35 to 44. Mark chapter 12 beginning at verse 35. Listen now to God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving Word. Mark continues, And as Jesus taught in the temple, He said, How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? David himself in the Holy Spirit declared, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. David himself calls him Lord, so how is he his son? And a great throng heard him gladly. And in his teaching he said, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts who devour widow's houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation. And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums, and a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. 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 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. May God be praised through the reading and hearing of his holy word, amen. Father in heaven, we pray that you now would speak to us from the page of scripture. Bless me as I teach your word, bless us as we hear. Father, cause us to see Jesus as he is and then to follow him as we should. And would you bless us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. The question of which side won a battle is sometimes open for debate. take the great struggle between the Northern and Southern armies on September 17th, 1862 in the rolling hills of Southern Maryland. There is some debate about who won the Battle of Antietam. And for the most part, historians will give the victory to the Southern army because General Robert E. Lee was holding the ground at the end of the battle. That's one of the standards of who won a closely contested battle while who was occupying the battlefield will give the victory to him. That's the Battle of Antietam. Now, a different kind of victory is that like the one won by the great French conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte. On December 2nd, 1805, he faced the combined Russian-Austrian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz. At the end of the day, their armies were so absolutely crushed and shattered that their nation surrendered to the French conqueror. You have lost the battle. If at the end of the battle, your country has to surrender. And that was that kind of victory. Well, as we draw near to the end of Mark 12, we've been watching a battle. Hasn't been a physical fight, but it's been a war of words. It's been in deadly earnest. All the different power groups, the religious leaders of Jerusalem had been coming to Jesus in the temple. They want to discredit him so he can be put to death. First the priest demanded his authority to cleanse the temple. Then the Pharisees and Herodians, they had a trick question. Then the scribe, and then the Sadducees, and then most recently the scribes. And on each case they were unable to dislodge Jesus. He was able to manage them pretty easily and they were confounded. And yet the question can be asked, well, what kind of victory is Jesus going to claim? Will it be like the exhausted army of Robert E. Lee that's going to hold on and hold the battlefield and claim the victory? Or will it be like Napoleon's French army that utterly routs the opposition? Well, the answer comes in Mark 12, 35, which tells us that after Jesus had fielded all these questions, he actually then went on the offensive. He had a question of his own. Now, Jesus did not array mass cannons or troops of musket men. But as Paul would later say, he destroyed arguments to take every lofty opinion captive that is raised against the knowledge of God. 2 Corinthians 10, verse 5. Like the great captains of military history, Jesus did not launch some inconsequential frontal assault. No, he went for the flanks. He went in to put an end to the battle, to the opposition. And his earnest resolve for victory is seen here in the question that he asked. The point of which was to assert that the promised Messiah was not merely the human descendant of David, but that he must be the son of God. Well, Jesus' question in the temple served to rebuke his opponents, but also to instruct the people. This passage, the argument that Jesus makes from the first verse of Psalm 110, is an argument that would be repeated on more than one occasion by the apostles, because the point is to make clear how the Bible tells us to look upon the promised Messiah. David Garland writes that the enemy's problem was in part that they did not fully comprehend God's plan for the Messiah. Well, Jesus challenged them by means of this psalm. And there's three things in this passage. First of all, from the Old Testament, he shows how the Messiah is God's son and not merely David's son. But then as he wraps up, what, by the way, this is his last public teaching in all of his ministry. And he's going to fiercely condemn the hypocrisy of his religious opponents. And then he's going to praise a life that honors him as what he is, the son of God. Let's look at those. First, this claim of Jesus through this question. The opponents had faded away and Jesus continues his teaching in the temple. What an appropriate thing. The temple is a symbol of God's dwelling amidst his people and there's Jesus. And as we've been reading the Gospel of Mark, it's been basically three years, and Jesus, He first came in Galilee, that rustic area. And remember that great statement of Mark 1 15, Jesus presented Himself, the Kingdom of God, the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the Gospel. And all that time he'd been gathering people, he'd been declaring himself, he'd been giving his epic teaching, he'd been performing miracles. And now after all of that, right on schedule, he's in the very heart of the holy city of God. He's in the temple in Jerusalem. Well, not surprisingly, the content of his teaching is no trivial matter. By the way, Christians want to talk about the weighty things. We want to talk about the essential things of salvation and we follow Jesus' example. This is his content, that the promised Savior, the human heir of David, is none other than God's Son, as the Old Testament predicted. Now the passage from which Jesus makes this point is Psalm 110, verse 1, written by David a millennium earlier. And he begins by raising a question that really is not in dispute. Look at verse 35, he asks, how can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? Now, he's noting the common belief taught regularly by the scribes, the Jewish scholars, that the Messiah, when he came, he would be the human descendant of the heroic King David, the one through whom God had established the Israelite kingdom. We've seen all through Mark's gospel that this belief is widespread. They were expecting a savior to appear and he would be identified as the heir of David. By the way, notably, this is not abstract because Jesus is the son of David. And people know this. So there's not an academic discourse going on here. He has appeared in Jerusalem. He is the son of David. And they're not just falling off trees. It's a tree in biblical terms that had been cut off. And this shoot arises from the line of David. There he is. And they know that. Remember when he was passing through Jericho, blind Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was going by. What did he say? Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And then during the entry into Jerusalem, just days before this, the people crowded, blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David. They knew that this Jesus was the heir of the line of David. And they also knew that the Messiah must be the son of David. Jesus fulfilled this biblical qualification of Davidic lineage. And so in asking how the scribes teach that the Christ is the son of David, Jesus is not trying to overthrow that doctrine, that line of biblical revelation. Isaiah 9-7 had said that the promised Messiah would reign on the throne of his father David. Jeremiah 23, 5 has said God would raise up for David a righteous branch. That's the idea. The trees cut down. That's the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the Davidic line. But God will cause a branch, a shoot to come from the line of David, like Isaiah 11 says. Now, let's be clear that the religious leaders who opposed Jesus, they believed this doctrine. They taught this doctrine. There were other important doctrines that they believed. They believed, for instance, as Malachi taught, that before the Messiah came, one like Elijah would show up. And yet when he did show up in the person of John the Baptist, they didn't follow him. And they believed that the Messiah would be the son of David from the line of David. And yet when he shows up very openly, Jesus presents his qualifications. They hated him. And here right now they're trying to conspire to kill him. This reminds us. that their studied unbelief reminds us that an intellectual grasp of biblical truth is not enough to save you. There's many unbelieving scholars who can lecture. I've seen it. They lecture very accurately, very pointedly about the biblical doctrine of salvation. In their case, they just don't believe it's true. But it's possible to not only know it and believe it and still not embrace it in faith. Why is that? Because we must be convicted of our sin. We must be humbled. We must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit. See, such as this is a doctrine of total depravity. So unable are we to believe that even these men who knew these truths, when Jesus appears, they hate him. My friends, we need to be born again. And that's correlated with conviction of sin. We need to humble ourselves before the Lord. And intellectual pride can be a barrier in the embrace of the gospel. Well, again, Jesus' emphasis in this question is not to argue against the belief that the Christ would be the heir of David. But what he really aimed at was to show that the people, they needed to raise their aspirations higher than that. Their estimation of the Messiah, the Savior, needed to go up. Their whole idea about what salvation involved needed to go from the earthly realm to the heavenly realm. And we've observed how often the people show that what they were looking for was an earthly conqueror, an earthly deliverance. And so to this end, Jesus brings up the curious nature of Psalm 110 verse one, in which David himself said this, the Lord said, this is David, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. Now Jesus prefaces this citation by noting that David spoke by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Verse 35, David himself in the Holy Spirit declared. Now here is the New Testament affirming the divine authority of the Old Testament. Some people treat the Old Testament as a sort of lesser book. Well, Jesus didn't, the apostles didn't. It's human authors like David and Peter's words were carried along by the Holy Spirit, 2 Peter 121. The Old Testament is the word of God. It's not inferior to the New Testament. In fact, at the time of Jesus, the Bible, the entirety of the written scripture, was the Old Testament. The New Testament had not yet been written. Moreover, we should not dismiss the Old Testament as irrelevant to our understanding of Jesus and the gospel. What did he say in John 539? They wrote of me. The chief subject of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ. One of the greatest follies of our time is how many Bible-believing Christians, they treat the Old Testament as more or less an irrelevant book. Oh, there's some good moral examples, and that's a dangerous way to interpret the Old Testament, in fact. But they, in some cases, they say, well, it's somebody else's religion. You know, Jesus hadn't come. But look at what Jesus, he's going to prove the truth about the Messiah from a detail in one verse of the Psalm, Psalm 110, verse one. My friends, when we read the Old Testament, we're not reading about somebody else's spiritual experience. We're not reading about some other people's hope. It's our people, it's our past. It tells of our salvation and our future, of our Christ. It is our book together with the New Testament. And in this case, Jesus points to a statement in David's psalm to prove that the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, must be God's Son. Now go back to Psalm 110. Here's what Jesus notes. David says, David is speaking to the Lord about the promised Messiah, and here's what he says. The Lord said to my Lord. Then he talks about the Lord exalting him and giving him victory over his enemies. Now, the first instance of Lord in that statement is David. the covenant name of God, in the Old Testament it would have been Yahweh. When you're reading your Old Testaments, often you'll see the word LORD and it's in small capital letters. That's a convention where the Hebrew text says is Yahweh. It's a tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of the Lord, Yahweh, I am that I am. And so David says here, Yahweh said, then the second use of Lord is Adonai. That's the Hebrew word for, this is the Old Testament version of it, for my master, my sovereign, my Lord. And so David says to the Lord in Psalm 110 verse one, Yahweh said to my sovereign, to my Lord. Now Psalm 110 is regarded as a royal psalm. He's talking about the king, but it is the king who's saying it. So it's not about David because David's the one who's talking about another person who is his sovereign, who's his Lord. And the Jewish exegetes correctly said, well, he's talking about the Messiah. In fact, if you read the records from their time, they will say Psalm 110, verse one, David is talking not about himself. He's talking about the Messiah. The Lord said to my Lord, the Messiah. Now here's the point Jesus makes. He said, now hold on. I thought the Messiah was David's son. And of course he was. And there's abundant biblical evidence that was a prevalent view. He goes, well, how is it, look at verse 37, David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son? Now, fathers may be very courteous to their sons. We ought to be courteous. We ought to speak well to our sons. But fathers don't call their son Lord. You know, when I was raised, they'd say, yes, sir, to my father. But when my father called me sir, that meant I was in trouble. Come here, young sir. That was not a form of respect to me. He wasn't saying master to me, not at all. Fathers, they don't call their sons Lord or master. That's Jesus' point. But here's David, David's understanding was that the coming Savior, who's going to be his son, his offspring, is so much greater than him that he refers to the Messiah as his Lord. This is someone who's greater than King David. Now who's greater than King David? Who's the sovereign of King David? There's only one answer. God is greater than David. The sovereign of David is the Lord God. And so here's the answer. It's given from Psalm 110. It's the hymn written by James Montgomery that we're talking about great David's greater son, namely the son of God. That's the point Jesus is making. The only person, the only person about whom David could conceivably be speaking is a divine person. The son of David must be also the son of God. Now Jesus teaching from false all 110, which are the final words of his extraordinary public ministry, make a point that is absolutely vital to our salvation. Namely, we must anticipate and we must trust and worship a savior who is not merely David's human heir or exalted in any other human way, but who is the divine son of God, the heir of God, who's come to earth via the incarnation. In order to be saved, we must be like doubting Thomas. When he doubted no more, what did he do? He fell and worshiped Jesus. He said, my Lord and my God. What a deadly error it is for people to express admiration for Jesus as a sort of human ideal. And of course he is. And they might even say, oh no, Jesus is actually the most admirable person. But they leave it at that. It's very easy. That doesn't put any claims upon me. That's just me admiring him. And countless people, they'll do the same thing. And they'll speak highly of Jesus. But they do not embrace him as the unique Son of God. Well, according to the Bible, that sort of person is not saved. 1 John 2, 23 makes it very clear that belief in the deity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God is absolutely essential to salvation. Let me quote that verse. 1 John 2, 23, No one who denies the Son has the Father. And what he means is, no one who denies that Jesus is the Son of God has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. In John 20, 31, he says, I've written this whole gospel that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God, the person and work of Christ. We must identify Him and worship Him as the unique Son of God, our divine Savior who came from heaven. But it doesn't really end there if we believe that Jesus, unlike everybody else, is in a whole other category. He's actually, as David said, He's my sovereign. He's God. Well, then we must yield our obedience to Him. We need to repent of the way we've been living for ourselves. We must follow Him as His disciples. You see, according to the Bible, there is no other true faith. There is no other way of salvation other than belief in this Jesus as God's Son, who died on the cross for our sins, and then to follow Him, to surrender our lives to Him in obedient faith, not perfectly, but sincerely and fervently. If you say, I believe in Jesus, then you just go on your way as if he didn't matter. Well, that falls short of biblical faith. Now, let me say, this is really important because you and I happen to be living in a time where a large number of evangelical Christians would not biblically be considered saved. That's just the times in which we live. Why is that? Well, partly because many of them don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The surveys show it. I'm an evangelical Christian. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? No, or maybe. Well, then you're not saved. Or then you say, well, are you a born-again believer? Yes, I sociologically define myself as a born-again believer. But then the question is, do you follow Him? Do you embrace the Word of God? Of course you're a sinner. Of course you could do better. But you've yielded yourself to Jesus. He's laid hold of you by sovereign grace. You've responded like Matthew. Levi the tax collector, Jesus says, come and follow me. He got up and followed him. Are you doing that? If you're not, there is no biblical basis for you to be considered a Christian, for you to be saved unless Jesus has claimed your worship and allegiance. Now, this is why the New Testament goes to such lengths to prove the deity of Jesus Christ. You have the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke's gospel that tell the story, the remarkable story of how the eternal Son of God was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary. How did that happen? Well, he was conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit. Mary had not been with a man. There's no human father involved. And the angel Gabriel came to her and said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you so that you will give birth to the Son of God. Crystal clear. It's a unique, miraculous event. The Virgin Mary has a conception by the Holy Spirit. That child is the Son of God. Or then you fast forward to Jesus' baptism, and John the Baptist baptizes him, and the dove is seen coming down, and God the Father speaks from heaven, and what does he say? You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased. And so in this, in many ways, the essential New Testament message is that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnate, eternal Son of God who's come as our Savior. Now this means as well that the salvation to which we look is not one that would be done by a mere human. David Garland points out that the kingdom he brings is greater than that of our father David. It is the kingdom of God, our heavenly father. And so unlike the people of Jesus day, they wanted an earthly deliverance. It'd be like, what do you want? I want my credit cards paid off. That'd be a huge help. I'd like my disease taken away. I'd like our party to win the election. We would like all of those sorts of things. And we need to realize that Jesus did not come merely to do these things. He came to deliver you from your sins. He came that you who were dead in sin would be alive in Christ. He came that you would become an heir of heaven, that you would know God and you would have eternal life. That's the way the Christian thinks. That's the agenda we're serving. There are earthly deliverances that would be good and yet they would be ultimately vain. Why? Because we are guilty before the Holy God. Because we are mortal. Because the grave awaits us all and we turn to dust and we stand before our Holy God in judgment. Jesus sent his Son. And so here's the question, well, how could one man die voluntarily, admittedly, and yet he sheds his blood and everyone who believes in him, millions of people over history, they believe in him and they're forgiven. How can that one man do that? Because he's a son of God. The person of Christ is necessary to the work of Christ. How can we have eternal life? How can we really live forever because we follow this one man? I love the answer of Hebrews 7, 24 to 25, which talks about his eternal priesthood. And he says that because Jesus holds his priesthood permanently, he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost all those who draw near to God through him because he always lives to make intercession for them. Oh, praise the Lord that He sent His own eternal Son, His own sovereign Son. We have a sacrifice that avails to forgive us of all of our sin because of the worth, the infinite worth of His life as the Son of God. We have a Savior who does not and cannot fail. There will never be a time in all history to come when God's Son is not that priest interceding for you and securing your salvation. How essential it is that he is not merely David's heir. He is God's eternal son. Well, what an astonishing sight. There's Jesus in the temple. It's his last public teaching. And he presents himself. People know he's the son of David. And he says, oh, by the way, the promised son of David is the son of God. Now, what should have happened? Well, the scribes should have come running to him to pledge their allegiance. The people should have done what Thomas did, knelt before him, confessed their need of his salvation. That's not what happened. Now Mark says in verse 37, the great throng heard him gladly. Don't be too excited about that explanation. They thought Jesus' observation was interesting. Wasn't that a smart handling of Psalm 110? I think he's totally routed. The scribes will give the victory to Jesus. They plotted his skill and insight. And yet there he was, the son of God incarnate, declaring the necessity of his person and work in the courts of the holy temple. And there is no one who calls upon him in saving faith. You know, this tragedy is repeated today. whenever Jesus' deity is taught from the Bible, but people who appreciate the sermon nonetheless refuse the Savior. Jason Meyer is right when he says it's not enough to say that Jesus is right. You must confess him as Lord. Well, what is there to say about Bible teachers who carefully declare a biblical doctrine that actually sounds in so many ways, and yet the whole point of their ministry is to lead people away from Jesus Christ? Well, that's what Jesus faces. And his answer is a strident, whoa. This is not some polite academic display going on here. Look at verse 38. Jesus, in his teaching, said, beware of the scribes. This is a very serious matter. It's a life or death matter. That's why in Matthew's version of these same events, there is an entire chapter, Matthew 23, that is nothing but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. And he denounces them for this, he denounces them for that, an entire chapter. It concludes with that lamentation, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I would have gathered you like a mother her chicks, but you were not willing, you who kill the prophets. Jesus responds with a great woe. What a terrible thing it is. Well, here's Mark's summary of that. Verses 38 to 39, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts. Now, when Jesus tells us what the scribes like, that's the word he uses, what they are motivated by, he knows that their motivation was not the glory of God, it was not the edification of the people, it was that they would receive praise and honor from men. This is the hypocrisy for which he condemns them. He gives some details. He notes how they walk around in long robes. Now, you may say, well, aren't you wearing a robe now? Well, I don't wear it to the mall. The Reformed churches put robes on ministers as an emblem of ordination, but we take it off after the service. It's not designed to glamorize. I don't think it does either. Glamorize the minister. I don't think our society is one where I'm under great temptation to think if I walked down Main Street with my robes, everybody would honor me. I doubt it. I would just break out in a sweat and collapse if I did that. But it was different for them. They actually wore white linen robes the full length with ornate things on them and tassels around them. And Jesus says they loved to go to the marketplaces and receive greetings. Now this is how it was. We know this from the Mishnah and other writings. When a scribe was walking into the marketplace, it was expected that everyone would rise to their feet. a scribe and you would greet the scribe as rabbi or master and Jesus says see this is what it's all about for you guys they the scribes love it this is what they aim at that they're receiving praise and honor oh there's perks too When they go to the synagogue for Sabbath worship, they sit at the front. The seats are reserved for them. Reserved for Rabbi so-and-so, reserved for Master so-and-so. By the way, we need to take that to heart. The church is not to grant public honor to people of worldly eminence in the church. I grew up in army churches and army chapels, and there are a lot of good things about it, but one of the kind of weird army Christian things was the front rows for the general. And then the colonels, and we sat more or less by rank. I think it's just really the army instinct, but that should not be that way in the church. Maybe you're an eminent person. Maybe you're an impressive person. Maybe you say, why am I sitting in the back? Why do I have to sit in the balcony? You know what Jesus said elsewhere? He said, if you're wise, you'll sit at the back and let them move you up. And the church should not be granting public earthly honor in the worship service in that way. They also got it at the sacred feast. They had special seating. Well, what should be the attitude of those who teach God's Word? Well, the attitude ought to be that of humble servanthood. There is a proper sense of authority. There's an office. You're to exercise the authority. You're to contend for the faith. You're to rebuke and correct. All of those sorts of things, but it's to be humble servanthood. I think the best description is given by John the Baptist in John chapter 3. It's at a time when Jesus is coming. People are actually leaving John the Baptist to go follow Jesus. And John's people come to him, and they're upset. And he goes, you misunderstand. That's the aim. And he makes the comment of Jesus. He must increase. I must decrease. That should be the aspiration of a true servant of God. Now, in verse 40, he gives a worse indictment, that they devour widows' houses. And so they're using their spiritual authority to exploit vulnerable people for their money. Now, part of the situation was that scribes were not paid. And so they needed patrons. And one of the best ways to do this was to find a wealthy widow. And she'd be vulnerable. She'd probably be lonely. And they would pray upon her. And they would make her think that she was receiving special place. And they would exhaust her resources to their own benefit. William Lane writes, the extension of hospitality to a scribe was strongly encouraged as an act of piety. It was particularly meritorious to relieve a scribe of his concern for his livelihood. In fact, a Jewish historian writing some years later tells an event that would have happened around the time of Jesus where one scribe had gotten a really wealthy widow and he persuaded her to make a massive gift to the temple and then he had embezzled that gift and he had gone away with it. It was such a notorious event that news of it came to Rome and even the Emperor Tiberius, that's not a godly person, that's a wicked man, even he was scandalized by it. You think of what Paul said in Romans 2 verse 24, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. You know, one of the worst banes of the church are hypocritical ministers, pastors and preachers for whom it's all a pretense. There's no actual service to God. There's no actual godliness. It's a show and the harm they do is bad enough to the people they exploit and use, but what they particularly damage is the reputation of Christ before the watching world. We have so many ministers today committing gross sexual sins or financial abuses or gross ways of treating people. And we meet them. They go, I'm not going to be a Christian. I read the newspaper. Of course, the Internet loves to give these things will make headlines. You'll never see a headline. Godly minister faithfully serves congregation in humility. That doesn't make the news. But Paul was right. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, he says, of such people. We think today of false teachers who, oh, how sad it is when they draw in desperate people. People are desperately sick or lonely, and they turn on the TV, and there's a preacher, and oh, for 9.95, you can order your own miracle towel, blessed by the preacher, and it will heal you, and they're sold in the thousands. It's what Jesus deplores. Well, finally, he scorns the false piety in verse 40 of the scribes who for a pretense make long prayers. Now, by long, he doesn't mean an eight-minute pastoral prayer during the worship service. He means an hour-long prayer in the marketplace or a 45-minute prayer. And the whole point is eloquence and a show of piety before the people. There are times for lengthy prayers. I think of the Westminster Confession. The Westminster Assembly, the heads of the divines, they were doing important work, and they would set aside a season of prayer, and they would say, you're going to pray for an hour and a half. And they had things to pray about. And they're seasoned Christians. They knew how to pray. And one thing as you grow, you learn to be able to be more robust in your praying. But that's not what's going on here. This is a piety they don't actually possess. Their hearts aren't directed towards God at all. But they've learned the lingo. You know how it goes. They learned the ministerial style. They had the gesture. They were masters of the oratorical pause. And they made the people think, oh, what a godly man, when they were filthy inside. Well, see, that was their problem. And the problem was that God was not deceived. And he responded in anger. Look at Jesus' conclusion, verse 40. They will receive the greater condemnation. Now that greater condemnation says there are some things that really stoke God's wrath and will lead to greater indignation. And what's interesting, again, we tend to think of the moral issues. Well, it's a sexual sin. Well, that is a bad thing. or they lied, or he slandered someone, or in some other way he committed an expression. Those are bad sins, but the things that really, according to Jesus, really anger God is ministerial abuse, the exploitation of the weak, the hypocrisy of false religion for show and for earthly praise and for benefit. J.C. Ryle says it's bad enough to be led away captive by open sin, to serve diverse lusts and pleasures, but it is even worse to pretend to have religion when we are really serving the world. Have you ever had the experience of your praying in some public setting, maybe it's a school group, maybe it's a family group, maybe it's in the church, and you realize that what you're really thinking about is how you can act a certain way so that people will be impressed, will repent of that. It's fairly common of us. We need to mortify that sin. We need to go to the Lord. In fact, we need to go before we go and say, Lord, give me a right spirit. Allow me to really pray to you, and if I'm leading others, let it be a blessing to them, but let my heart be to you." Well, that's what they did not do. Well, James 3 reminds us, don't desire prominence in the church. If the Lord calls you to it, pray. He says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. Well, that is the hypocrisy that is condemned by God's Son. Well, the passage ends with quite the opposite. We see an example of the life that honors God's Son. That's this passage. Jesus insists that the Son of David is God's Son. And then God's Son condemns hypocrisy, but then He honors a life that honors Him. Here's what happened sometime during Jesus' teaching in the temple. They wander over to the court of women and they go to where the treasury was located. And we are told, we know from the ancient writings, that there were 13 chests in the court of the women. That was where everybody could come, all the Jews could come there. And they were labeled. If you're going to give for this purpose, put it in this chest. And they were shaped like a chauffeur horn with a narrow top so they couldn't be stealed. And there were actually labels on them. For this purpose, put here. For that purpose, put there. And what's interesting, Jesus does some people watching. You ever done that? I remember when my wife and I were dating, we'd go down to the park near where we lived in Philadelphia and we'd sit on the bench and sometimes we'd say, let's look at people's shoes and we'd make jokes. We'd just kind of laugh about that. Well, there's the son of God and he's watching. What he's watching is the giving of tithes and offerings. Isn't that a little disquieting subject? Well, the truth is the whole of our lives is under the Lord's sight. But we are not able to deceive him. Yes, he knows. He is watching us. And here's Jesus observing them, all these different types of offerings. They sat down opposite the treasury, and they watched the people putting money into the offering pots. Now, while Jesus and the disciples were sitting there watching, verse 41 says, many rich people came and they put in large sums. And there'd be a loud noise. They probably, in many cases, they, you know, sometimes large gifts are made ostentatiously. I'm having a hard time getting it in. It's so big. Can somebody help me? Listen to the loud clink of the coins. And that's the kind of thing that goes on. Many organizations today want to do everything they can to encourage extraordinarily large guests, and their main way of doing it is publicly praising them for doing so. If you give such and such amount, we'll name a building after you. Wouldn't that be great? If you give a lot, we'll name the school of nursing will be in your name, or the business school will bear your name. And sadly, churches, because what they want is money, they do the same thing, and they just have a way of making sure people know who the big hitters are, and we celebrate the big givers. How contrary that is to the spirit of the Lord Jesus. Nothing wrong with giving large gifts to the church. In fact, I have known some very wealthy people who, through their stewardship of wealth, were an enormous blessing to the kingdom of Christ. But the best ones did it discreetly. The right way, Jesus says, don't let your left hand know what your right hand's doing. Don't make a show of your piety. And that's not the way we're to give. Well, it's noteworthy that Jesus makes no comment about the wealthy putting in large sum. What draws his attention actually is a poor widow. And she comes up and she has so little to give, no doubt she gives it discreetly. She drops two of the smallest coins into the offering and Jesus gathers the disciples and says, I want to talk about her. By the way, the two coins that the King James called them, the widow's mite, that has stuck in our minds, the Greek word was the lepta. It was the smallest coin in currency, copper disk, less than a centimeter in diameter. It was 164th of a day's wages of a denarius. It took two of them to make a penny, as it were. That's what was given. Now that would be eye-raising today, I think, if the offering plates passed and someone puts in a penny. If people were watching, and I suppose they mostly aren't, they would go, wow, that person put a whole penny in the offering plate. And yet Jesus sees this and he calls them over, verse 43, and he says this, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. And you're going, Jesus, what kind of new math is this? You're saying the smallest gift given is more than the combined amount of all the others. Well, it's God's estimation. It's God's means of valuing. Because unlike us on so many occasions, what God is interested from us is not our money, but our hearts. Now there's a connection between the two. That's why the Bible teaches frankly about giving and the way we use our money and particularly our generosity is in fact a very good barometer of our devotion to the Lord. And that's why Jesus praises this poor woman. She gave financially far less, but proportionally far more. Look at verse 44, for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything that she had, all that she had to live on. See, Jesus reads the heart and he saw there was true love for God. There was a sacrificial fervor. She had a little bit of money and what she wanted to do was to glorify God with it. She wanted to serve God with it. She wanted something redemptive to come from it. She wanted to support the worship of God with it. Whereas the much greater amounts were given without any real devotion or true sacrifice. The contrast between her genuine piety and faith and the pretense of the wealthy was marked. Well, let me conclude with three applications from Jesus' reaction to the poor widow's generosity. And the first is this, that financially poor Christians discover that small but sincere and fervent sacrificial gifts are of great value to the Lord. Never think, well, I shouldn't offer a gift because I only can give a little, why should I? Because you're giving to the Lord, because it's out of your heart, it's for Him. Small gifts that are esteemed lightly by the world can be a great blessing to God because they reflect a love for God, a fervor for God. And it was a blessing to God. You think of how 2 Corinthians 9 says, God loves a cheerful giver. If you can only give a little bit, never think that that doesn't matter. No, it matters greatly. You're participating as you can. You're showing true fervor to the Lord and he delights in it. Now secondly, Christians who can make larger gifts should measure their generosity not in dollar amounts, but by the sacrifice involved. If, as Jesus says, we're contributing only out of our abundance, so we're supporting God, and maybe it's a lot of money, but that has no effect on us. We have so much money, it doesn't cramp our lifestyle in any way. Well, then the Lord sees that. He says it's of low value to Him. By the way, here is where there's a danger of the misuse of the way we think about the biblical practice of tithing, the biblical practice of giving 10%, because there are some Christians, many Christians, who that's not a big sacrifice. We have enough money. We live in such lifestyles that our income is far above our basic needs. And so we're giving what we must. What we ought to do is give what we can. That's what motivated the widow. The right way to say is, how much can we give to the Lord? There shouldn't be a reluctance. Oh, no, we've got to pay the tide. Oh, no, we were going to buy something of that for ourselves. No, there ought to be a desire. It's for the Lord. He is a son of God. We want to give to him. That's what Jesus is saying. Those who think that God is honored simply by the dollar amount misunderstand. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He wants us to be motivated for His glory, His praise, for the advance of His gospel. He wants us to give as much as we can because we love Him, not the minimum amount that we are obliged. And then thirdly, while the widow's mite informs us about Jesus' attitude towards our financial offerings, the point's not really ultimately about money. Now, what's the context? Jesus is in the temple. What's the thing he wants them to know? That the Messiah is the Son of God. See, that's the question. If Jesus is the Son of God, well, how will we respond to him? What life honors him as the Son of God? And the answer is the widow's mite, she gave her all. I don't know, it doesn't mean she gave all of her assets, we're not told. But what she had at that time, at least, she gave all of it. This was her heart. I give myself wholeheartedly to Jesus. Why would you do that? Because he's the son of God. Remember the question from the scribe earlier? What's the greatest commandment? Jesus answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all your heart, with all your might, with all of your mind. Well, this woman did with all of her money as well. Jesus is the Lord and we're to say to him, Lord, I want to give my whole to you money, but many other things. Jason Meyer tells a story of being in church with his little daughter and the offering plate came by and she reached into her pocket and she grabbed everything in it and she's about to put all the money she had. She's about to put it in the plate and he says to her, you know, honey, you don't have to give it all. You can keep some for herself. And her answer was this. I don't need money. I have a daddy. And she put it all in. But Maya realized, I have a daddy too, because Jesus Christ is his son. Doesn't mean we're not financially prudent in a reasonable way, but that's the attitude. I'm saved by the son of God. I'm a child of the heavenly father. I'm in the air of the eternal glory. He provides for all of my needs. Isaac Watts had it right. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, demands my life, demands my all. Father, we pray that you would give us the spirit of this widow because Jesus our Lord is the Lord of glory. He's the savior. He has done for us more than we could ever ask or imagine. Father, would you by your spirit work in us? Lord, we are so prone to this hypocrisy. We are so prone to doing things for show. But Father, cause us to renounce that utterly, mortify such desires. Cause us to give our hearts wholeheartedly to you. And that will affect our financial giving, but it'll affect everything, Lord. Thank you that Jesus is your son, and he died for our sins. Grant by your grace that we would live wholeheartedly unto him. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.