What's It Worth to You?

Man, always fun to start off a service with the baptism, and man, super excited about that. If baptism is something that’s been on your minds or on your heart, something that you’ve been considering, we have a few other folks that heard about the the baptism that was happening this morning, and they said, “Hey, I I would really like to do that, but I don’t know if January is the month for me.” We’ve got a couple other—it’s not just a joke about the water, okay? We’ve got a few other folks that have expressed interest, and so I’m looking at another week coming up in the month of February. So seriously, if that’s something that you are interested in, if that’s something that you feel like might be your next step of walking with Jesus, then yeah, write that on a connect card on your way out, or come and find me, or email me, or call. I would love to sit down and have that conversation with you, and we could line that up.

We’ve come to the time of our service for some congregational prayer. Tomorrow, big day in the life of our country. Yeah, yeah, regardless of kind of where you get my words right, how you feel about incoming President Donald Trump, hey, here’s the thing: Romans chapter 13, Paul very explicitly said, pray for your leaders. You so what we’re going to do, we’re going to take some time, and we’re just going to pray for him. He wears an incredible amount of weight as he has now been given the task of leading our nation, and we do pray that God would use him ultimately to bless the the lives of the world, that God would use him for ultimately for the the peace of our world. But we also know as we pray for him that our ultimate trust is not in any person that can pass away. The scripture says that the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord is what stands forever. We are grass; we wither, our influence wanes, but we serve a God who rules all things, and we are going to ask that God would protect him and use him. So what I want you to do for the next few moments is that you would just pray for him, you would pray for our country as we have a leadership transition there, and I’ll put a bow on it and begin our time in the God’s word. So you take it away; we’ll pray for a moment. Thank you.

Eh, Father, I want to say thank you today, God. Thank you for bringing us to today, Lord. Thank you for giving us another morning that we get to gather with our church family, some of us for the thousandth time, others of us for the very first time. God, thank you for bringing us together here at Sauldam Baptist Church. Father, you say in the Proverbs that the hearts of the kings are like a stream of water in your hands; you direct them. Romans 13 says that no matter who our leaders are, we ought to pray for them, that you’ve established government for your purposes. So Lord, we do pray for incoming President Donald Trump. God, I I ask that you would protect him. I ask that you would cover him. Ultimately, God, I ask that you would give him a deep love for you, Lord, that he would lead our nation in a way that would honor and glorify you, in a way that would serve for the the prosperity not just of our country but for our world. But we recognize, Jesus, no matter who is the president in the White House, you are the King on the throne, thr over the entire universe, and no person can take your role. So Jesus, I ask ultimately that you would continue to lead us, that you would guide us, you would protect us, you would watch over us. I pray, Lord, that you would please draw many to yourself. God, there are four billion people in this world that have no idea what the name Jesus Christ even means, another two billion that have heard it and have rejected it. God, may 2025 be a year of mass awakening and revival; millions and billions would come to know you. Please, God, for our part in that, Lord, I pray that you would use Sauldam Baptist, you would use us to further your kingdom. God, would you use me right now to help equip and encourage your saints? God, would you help me draw those to you that don’t know you yet? Lord, I I believe There’s somebody in here that doesn’t know You, and God, I pray that You would use a few minutes of opening Your Word to draw them to You. Please, God, we love You, and it’s in Your great name that I pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, you can go ahead and open up to Mark chapter 12. Mark chapter 12. I’ll be covering the last four verses of Mark chapter 12. As you’re turning there, I want you to picture it with me. One morning this week, I had finished working out at the YMCA up in Somerville, and the day before, I had just had lunch with a buddy who was espousing all of the benefits of sitting in a sauna. Okay, I never sat in a sauna before. I didn’t really have any ammo to counteract any of his arguments with, so I figured, okay, all right, the YMCA, it’s built into the membership cost. They’ve got a little 5x5, I’m telling you, it’s maybe 5 feet by 5 feet sauna in this men’s locker room area. So I finished my workout, and I become one of three men once again sitting in a 5 by 5 room.

And I’m an extrovert. I get really charged up by being around people. So if I’m sitting between two men in a 5 by 5 room, I cannot be quiet. So I start talking, and I’m making painful conversation with Scott on my right. He’s not so much the verbal communicator, so I shift my attention and a little bit of my weight toward Kyle on my left. And Kyle and I, we’re just talking about fatherhood. He’s got a little child that he absolutely adores and is trying to do a great job of raising her. And the conversation gets to spiritual things, and Kyle says a very interesting thing. He says, “I actually don’t believe any of what the Bible has to say about Jesus or God or the gospel, but I want to give my daughter the opportunity to make that choice for herself.” So they take their daughter to all sorts of churches in all sorts of places around Somerville. They’ve taken her to Southern Baptist churches, to Jewish synagogues, they’ve taken her to Catholic mass, all sorts of stuff. They’re just saying, “All right, we’ll just throw it all against the wall and let’s see what sticks. She can make her own decision for her.”

And I’m sitting here thinking, like, wow, once again, I’m sitting in this 5 by 5 room on a little bench, and our legs are basically touching, and at that point, man, it’s like we’re—it’s just weird. But I know, man, it is my job. God has placed me here to share the gospel with this guy. So I start telling him the story of how I grew up in a church-heavy family. I grew up knowing a lot about Jesus, but ultimately not really wanting anything to do with Him. But at 15, a buddy of mine, he drives me home from youth group, he turns the car off, and he just kind of squares up with me the way a good buddy can, and he proceeds to tell me the story of why God would send His Son, how God so loved the world that He would give. And I just shared that with Kyle, and Kyle said, “That’s—that’s pretty interesting. That’s ultimately, though, that’s for you.”

And it was interesting. I was walking away from that conversation and thinking about him, thinking about what he’s trying to do for his daughter, and I was reminded of this verse in Romans chapter 8 where Paul says, “How can they believe unless someone preaches?” We are in a season called Deeper right now. This is just an initiative—one month of preaching into three months of discipleship—where my invitation to you, what I believe God’s invitation to us is, that we would take our faith and we would press it just a little bit deeper into the soil of Jesus. And we’re exploring three different habits to do that. The first one, the first week, was fasting, which is embracing the discomfort of hunger to deny food to have more of God. And then last week was embracing the discomfort of some awkward YMCA sauna conversations by sharing the life of Jesus with folks. And it hit me, man, God wants us to practice evangelism not just so that our faith can go deeper, but so that others can have faith to begin with.

So that’s my invitation to you on Saturday morning, that you would join me and Carter as we just try to take our faith a little bit deeper.

By sharing the gospel with others. This morning we are going to handle the final habit of going deeper, which is financial giving. So if you are playing the game of what are all the hot button topics Jeremy can address in a sermon, I have addressed politics and I’m about to address money as well. So there it is. Hopefully by now you are in Mark 12.

You see, financial giving is one of the most difficult things for us to do because I believe, and I know from experience, financial giving forces us in our walk to match our talk about God’s sovereignty, His ability to provide, and our need to walk by faith. We’ll see that again here in a moment.

This is Mark chapter 12:41-44. Sitting across from the treasury, Jesus watched how the crowd dropped money into the treasury. Many rich people were putting in large sums. Then a poor widow came and dropped in two tiny coins worth very little. Summoning His disciples, He said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others, for they all gave out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, she has put in everything she had, all that she had to live on.”

Man, as I read through that passage and I see this incredible example of financial giving and faith in action, I naturally ask a few questions such as what is this temple treasury? Well, I’m glad that you have asked as well. The temple treasury is the financial arm of the Jewish worship center. The treasury would have taken in people’s financial gifts and other gifts they would have brought. Those gifts would have directly funded the worship that was happening at the temple. It also would have funded the administrative needs and local benevolence as well.

Surrounding the treasury, which was a distinct part of the temple complex, would have been 13 trumpet-shaped brass-covered chests. Okay, I think that we’ve got a picture for you there. There had been 13 of those encircling the treasure area, and you heard it right, they’re brass, and all money back then was made out of metal. So when somebody is dropping their gifts into this brass trumpet with their metal coins, it would have been making noise. All currency was like that, and you could just picture the scene. This is maybe a dusty road in Jerusalem, a main thoroughfare that goes right by the temple, and there’s a bunch of people walking by the treasury. Now they may have fast-walked it and just kind of tossed their stuff in as they went, or they may have kind of slow-walked it and whistling, making sure people see them, and they’ve got their bag of money and they’re going like up to the Coinstar, you know, over at Walmart. They’re cl cl cl cl cl cl cl cl cl, let it kind of proceed down to the bottom, and they do it a little bit more, cl cl cl cl. You could just imagine the scene.

It gives a little context in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says when you give, don’t sound your trumpets, don’t sound your horns. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is telling us don’t draw attention to yourself when you are giving. Now giving at that time, obviously, and now, it’s meant to be anonymous, but it would have been very easy to make your financial giving public. Been incredibly easy. But notice the comparison too between this rich crowd and the poor woman. Now, for it’s a group of people versus someone by themselves.

All right, verse 41, it says Jesus is looking and He sees this crowd and there’s many rich people. Then verse 42, you’ve got a single person. The rich are all kind of clumped up together. It’s this crowd, it’s a lot of folks, where the woman is singled off by herself. She’s obscure, she’s isolated, she is alone. And it’s not just that she’s alone, it’s that she’s poor as well. Whereas the crowd is rich. Rich people would have been seen for being rich people. They would have had their nice tunics on, they would have had their maybe their strolling sandals on, they would have had their nice money bags, whatever it was at that time. I’m just being ridiculous right now. You would have noticed that they are people of means. You would have noticed that they’re wealthy, and over here you would have noticed there’s this woman who’s not.

so much that way. She’s poor. Her clothes aren’t that nice. She’s probably maybe don’t you have shoes on? She’s just a poor old woman. She would have been easily singled out for being by herself as well. She would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that crowd that we’re going to see as a bit self-pleasing and self-righteous look too. She would have been weak in her poverty.

Now America is an incredible nation and this world has come so far, but take yourself 2,000 years back where women don’t have the same rights that they do today, and she’s a widow. So this is a society where the women of society would have had to life or death depend on men, whether they are husbands or dads or sons or brothers, to support them. So she is not a person of means. It seems like she’s older and she is a widow; her husband has died. The crowd with their wealth and their numbers would have been seen as a group of of strength, whereas this woman by herself would have been easily cast off as a person of weakness.

That’s the scene you’ve got. That’s what Jesus is sitting across from the treasury, and He’s with His disciples, and He’s He’s over at the other side of the street, and He’s watching all this play out. And the poor widow, she drops in a couple of coins, and that’s when Jesus says, “Hey, hey, guys, guys, guys, come come to Me, come to Me.”

I want to explain a few things before I get to what Jesus said. Let’s continue to look at something. Those two coins, it’s fascinating. The Greek word for what that currency or that denomination is is called a lepta. You say lepta with me: lepta. 1/64th of a denarius. Say denarius: a denarius. A denarius would have been a typical day’s wage for a physical laborer. She dropped in two lepta, 2/64ths of a day’s wage, two tiny coins. Imagine that minuscule amount of money couldn’t have actually done anything for the temple, right? It couldn’t have actually supported the worship that would have been needed. It like it couldn’t have purchased the animals to sacrifice. It couldn’t have handled any of the administrative needs to make sure that the stuff the temple happens. It couldn’t have taken care of the benevolence needs of the local community. Those two small coins, in the world’s eyes and according to our economic valuations, it might as well have been nothing. She might as well have done nothing.

However, those two small coins were more than everything else put together, because 2 Corinthians 12:9 says this: God, through the Apostle Paul to us, says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” This woman, this poor old widow, was weak; however, God’s power is being being made perfect through her.

And before we really get to the heart of the passage, I want to ask you a question this morning: Do you feel weak? Is it easier for you to identify with the crowd of wealthy and the crowd of well-to-do, or is it easier for you to identify with the woman over here? Some of us might feel weak in our bodies as just the the normal stuff of aging and sickness and wear and tear takes its toll. Maybe you don’t quite get up like you used to. Maybe you’re just aching, things are creaking, you’re seeing the signs of aging on you. Maybe you feel weak physically, or maybe you feel weak mentally. Names, words, dates don’t quite they don’t quite come back to you the way they used to. Takes you a little bit longer to think through some stuff. Maybe you feel weak financially, like the woman, and you’re just you’re just struggling to make ends meet. You got a little too much month at the end of your money. Maybe you feel weak this morning.

God’s promise for you, if you feel weak, those that you are a perfect candidate for His power. The strong and the self-sufficient, those those that the world would view as respectable and influential, they do not get to experience or display the power of God. Listen to this: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” For us to experience the power of God, that means we’ve got to be weak. And God’s power was displayed through this weak woman. She was weak in every way; however, what she contributed according to God’s economy was more than everything else that had been tossed in there. You see, the rich crowd, they gave out of their surplus. The woman, however, Put in everything she had, all she had to live on. When Jesus pulls all the disciples together, it’s like he says, the rich were giving their large extras; the woman gave her small everything, and that’s what I value more. It’s fascinating, with all of the money contributed by the rich folks, with all of the money given by that crowd, the person we are talking about this morning is the, is the poor woman. It’s the poor woman that brings us to three truths about God and giving.

If you are a notetaker, this is all just kind of front matter. If you are a notetaker, I want you to write some of these things down. The first truth about God and giving is this: God knows what we give. Remember, Jesus was not sitting there by those brass trumpets counting up in his mental calculator how much everybody was giving. Jesus is across the street; he’s sitting down; he’s just watching it all. He knows exactly how much the rich crowd is dropping in—clank, clank, clank. He knows the two tiny lepta that the woman puts in that maybe didn’t even make a noise whenever it fell into the trumpet. Jesus knows how much we give. Jesus is sitting across the street, but he is totally aware of what’s happening. He knows what our cash flow is; he knows what we spend our money on; he knows how we spend our time, our energy, our thoughts, and our words. If God is Sovereign and if He is all-knowing, He knows everything, including what we give. That’s the first truth about God and money.

The second truth is this: God knows why we give. The way Jesus was talking about the widow in her example, and the way Mark has captured these details, it seems that the rich crowd was giving to be seen, heard, and respected, to be remembered for their financial gifts, whereas the poor widow, she gave because she trusted God and she wanted Him to have her everything. So when you give to Sauldam or you support another Christian ministry, God knows your heart, whether it’s on this side or on that side. God knows why you give. He knows what you give; He knows why you give.

And the third truth about God and money this morning is this: God’s grace is how we give sacrificially. God’s grace is how we give sacrificially. You see, true generosity is a sacrifice. There’s no way you could be generous without it actually hurting a little bit. During seminary, Becca and I were members of a church up in the Raleigh area, and they were going through a money series where they were talking about tithing and financial giving and all that as an expression of your discipleship to Jesus. And the pastor was preaching, and he said, “How do you know the right amount to give?” Because it’s relative. What somebody makes isn’t what I make, so what I give is relative to what they give, and all that. It’s fine. The pastor said this: “You know it’s enough when it hurts a little bit, because when it starts to hurt is when it’s actually a sacrifice, and it’s actually a faith step.”

That’s the way it is in life. If you only love people in your comfort, then you’re not actually loving them; you’re not actually reaching out toward them. But if it’s a little uncomfortable, that’s when you’re actually moving toward them. When it comes to your time, how you spend your time—any of us in the room also calendar-oriented people? We like our tasks; we like to be able to check off our list. I’m the only—okay, I’m on an island. Okay, I got three other folks. Water’s fine, baby. And I’ve got to ask myself every time I sit down to do a task and somebody calls or somebody walks in the room: what do I value? And if I keep people at arm’s length so that I can do whatever in the world I want to do, and I’m not sacrificing for them, it’s not hurting a little bit, it’s hard to say that I’m loving them that well.

The same is true with our finances. The only thing—or generosity, true generosity—is a sacrifice, and the only thing that can motivate real sacrificial generosity is this: a deep appreciation of God’s grace to you. You see, there are so many things that can motivate your financial giving, and America—I looked into this—America is one of the most generous nations in this world. What people give per capita to churches and to charities in America far outpaces other nations. So some of it for us is just culturally ingrained, but culture can’t motivate true generosity. Neither can personal goals, because personal goals can fluctuate. The moment you have a goal to save more money, your goal of giving money is tested. So personal goals can’t motivate real generosity, or tax write-offs, because the moment that the tax laws changed in America, we had to make a decision: am I going to be generous or not? Or even church needs. We have things at the church, whether it’s like maintenance things we want to press forward with, stuff, even the needs of church, spontaneous or planned, that can’t motivate true generosity. Or world needs, the things that you see around yourself, like hunger and homelessness. Those things are all great; they are all good reasons to give, but they cannot motivate true generosity. They all help, but they are not the fuel for your heart. The fuel for your heart is God’s grace.

There is one thing I want you to take away from this sermon this morning. Write this down: God’s grace fuels our generosity. God’s grace fuels our generosity. Only God’s grace and a belief in it can fuel this poor widow’s generosity. So as you give, remember you give because God gave to you. Our generosity ultimately is just a response of gratitude to God for His gift to us, and that gift that God gave to us was the most sacrificial and the most generous gift that God could ever give. John 3:16 describes the gift like this: “For God so loved the world in this way that He gave, He gave His one and only Son, so that every one who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Out of love, God did not take from you; He did not demand from you; He did not command to you. Out of love, God gives to you, and God does not give one from amongst the many. No, God gives His one and His only Son. God gives His one and His only Son, and that Son would come, and He would live, live a perfect life that you and I were designed and intended to live—a life of perfect harmony and unity with God and with one another, a life of holiness and sinlessness, but ultimately a life that neither you nor me nor Billy Graham nor anybody else could ever live, a life that is without any imperfection.

You can’t do it. You’ve never had a pastor that could. You never had a grandma that could. You never had a friend that could. On our best of days, we are people who sin. God knew that from before time; He would, He knew that there would need to be a sacrifice. He knew that there would need to be something given by Him so that we could be saved, and God gave His very best. He gave His one and His only Son, so that anybody who would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life. What my friend Rich described through his baptism a few minutes ago, what he demonstrated by being buried to himself and raised back to new life, and we just do it with water, it’s this: that you would give yourself to God, and that you would get His grace, that you would get His forgiveness, that you would be redeemed, you would be restored to the person that God wants you to be. God’s generosity to you is wild because He gave His very best, and it hurt. It hurt God. So as you give, remember God’s gift to you. It struck Him in His heart, and He even died for it.

Everything we do do for God is a response to His grace toward us. So whether this moves the needle for you or not, here’s what I want you to really just, just to treasure about this is that there is a God, and He loves you, and He cares for you. He sees your needs, He knows your wants, He knows your fears and your anxieties, He knows what keeps you up at night and what wakes you up in the morning, He knows what you’re angry about and what you despair over. He knows all those things, and instead of commanding and demanding first, what He does is He gives, and He moves toward you, and He offers you Himself. That is God. Anything you do in life for God is just a response back to Him. Everything you do, see, financial giving, it requires us to trust God, but God has already given us the very best proof of His love and His steadfastness for Us, He’s already given us the very best reason for us to trust Him with our money because He gave us His Son. So how do we do this? How do we live like that poor widow who is radically generous? We practice what others have called grace giving. Grace giving is a pattern of financial stewardship that responds to and is fueled by God’s grace.

Grace giving is guided by a proper perspective. It’s this: that you and your stuff all belong to God. Everything that God has made has been made for His purpose, which means nothing—nothing is really ours, not even our lives. God promises to meet our needs, and He has also given us assets to be stewarded to build His kingdom.

We are all like the money managers in the parable of the talents, where the landowner entrusted some of the talents. Talent is a word for money; it’s another denomination of currency. He entrusted sums of money to his managers, and he left on a long journey, and he told them, “Invest this while I’m gone. I’m going to come back, and we’re going to look at what you’ve done.” The landowner, the boss, comes back, and he sees that two out of the three money managers have invested it to get some return. They have used his money to build his wealth. One of them did not, out of fear that God, who is represented in the parable as the boss, would have punishment on him.

It’s like God is looking at us every day that you get paid, every time a little cash comes into your hand. It’s like God is saying, “Okay, are you going to steward this for My kingdom, or are you going to bury this because you’re afraid that I’m not going to take care of you and that I don’t love you?” See, a proper perspective of money is that God owns all of it, and we just get to be stewards and custodians of it. That’s the perspective.

Grace giving also is guided by proper principles, which means that all rightly motivated giving is done as an investment with God into His kingdom. All rightly motivated giving is done as an investment with God into His kingdom. That would mean that we give intentionally and joyfully and sacrificially.

To give intentionally simply means that you would have a plan to do it. There are some in the room, I’m sure, that don’t exactly have a plan worked out yet for how you give financially, whether it’s to Sauldam Baptist Church or to other Christian organizations. Man, the worst thing you could do when it comes to starting to give is not make a plan, because at that point it just becomes like a New Year’s resolution, which I assume most of us have already put back into the cupboard for next year, right? But if you want to make a habit of giving financially, then just make a plan. Say, “I want to give this percentage to these organizations.” Put it on paper. Keep yourself accountable to it. If you miss it once or twice, that’s okay. Chalk it up as a learning opportunity and just proceed. Make a plan.

But do it with joy in your heart. God loves a cheerful giver. He does not want us in our giving to be drudgery or to be slavish. What He wants is there to be joy behind it, and in that joy we can sacrifice for Him. We can make it be difficult ultimately because we trust that God has already done the most difficult thing for us.

Not all of us need to be like this poor widow who gave literally everything she had to live on. That’s not what I’m asking y’all to do. What I am inviting y’all to do is consider: is there a percentage of my giving that I want to increase because I want to go deeper into my relationship with Jesus, and I want to help fund more of what God is doing here at Sauldam Baptist Church?

So there’s a proper perspective in grace giving, there’s a proper principle of grace giving, and there’s a proper practice. Ultimately, our faith must have feet. We must act in obedience to see God work in our lives. So whether you’ve got a rich history of financial giving in the past or you’ve never done it before, the time is now. What will you do with taking what God clearly says is right? How will you practice that? Ultimately, the question is: over the next couple months as we continue our deeper initiative, should you go deeper with Christ through grace giving? You would see In your bulletins that we have commitment cards, they are right there for you. Here’s the thing about the commitment cards: those are simply physical tools for you. Those are ways for you to remember how you want to go deeper in your relationship with Jesus. Next week we’re going to kind of put a bow on this preaching series of deeper, and we’re just going to look at John 15, where Jesus says that He’s the vine, we’re the branches, and all that we do is an outflow of His life poured through us.

I just want to give you a handle. If you’re like me, it could be easy to forget the things that you’re trying to commit to do. So this week, between now and next Sunday, I just want you to look at that commitment card. If you’re married, do it with your spouse. Maybe even if you got old enough kids, bring your kids into the equation and say, “How should we go deeper in our relationship with Jesus?” Would it be through trying to fast a few meals a month? Would it be through trying to share the gospel a few times a month? Would it be through trying to increase our giving a little bit?

Here’s something that I want you to also know about the topic of financial giving in particular: I, as Pastor, do not know what you give. I do not want to know what you give. It’s not my business. So if you have any hang-ups about giving more to the church and me asking for that, I’m never going to see that. I’m never going to see that increase. It’s not my business, okay? If giving to the church is something you want to do, but you’ve been part of churches where pastors like me just harp on people about giving, then man, find another way for you to give. Give it anonymously with cash, or find some other organization that you can entrust your money to.

Ultimately, I’m not asking for your money. What I am asking is for you, if this is your step to accept God’s invitation of your relationship with Him going deeper through financial giving, just do it somewhere. You don’t have to do it with anything tied to me. I just want you to take some time this week to pray about that and to pray, “How is the Lord calling me to go deeper?”

We’re going to close out our service by singing one final song, but before we do that, I want to pray over us. If you will bow your heads. Lord, thank You, God. Not just thank You for the example of the poor widow from Mark, God, so much more so thank You for what You’ve done for us in the gospel, God. Thank You for how You’ve given us, You’ve given to us the very best gift You could ever give. You gave Your son Jesus. You gave Your life. You gave us Your life. How could we not respond in gratitude and faith? How can we not respond with our sacrificial giving, giving back to You, whether that’s our time or the food we consume or our finances? God, I pray that You would speak to us, that You would speak to the individual members of our church, that You would speak to our church corporately, that You would help us to know how we can go deeper with You over the next few months. Lord, we love You. Help our love for You to be pure and to be what motivates everything we do. God, it’s in Your great name we pray. Amen.