Read Luke 21:1-4

“The Widow’s Mite” we call the story in today’s reading.

When that widow got to heaven, do you think she was astonished to find that Messiah Himself had observed her action in the temple that day?

“I just wanted to honor God,” we can hear her saying. It’s not how much you can give; it’s why you give.
The apostle Paul expresses the widow’s mindset when he wrote to the Corinthian church, “For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have” (2 Cor. 8:12). Remember Jacob who promised the Lord one tenth of all the Lord gave him (Gen. 28:22)? The prophet Malachi challenges us to bring our tithes to God, then stand back and watch Him bless us (Mal. 3:10).

God created us. He gives us all that we have, from the next lung full of air to the newest job. Although it all belongs to Him, He lets us be in charge of everything. That makes us God’s trustees, someone managing property for another person. Ask any banker, and he or she will tell you that a trustee is held to a higher standard than an owner. If we owned our money, maybe we could justify using it as we please. But it isn’t ours. As God’s trustees, we need to invest the money He lets us oversee in the ways He directs.

Read Luke 20:41-47

Who is Jesus? Until you settle that question, you will not get far in the Christian life.

Since the kind of faith that receives answers to prayer begins with settled knowledge of God’s character, no more important question arises than our belief about the person of Christ. Is He man, or God? Is He both man and God?

Jesus forces that question upon the teachers of the Law in our reading for today. This is one of several places in scripture where Jesus asks people questions about Himself in pretended innocence. His hearers knew that Messiah was commonly referred to as “Son of David.” He asks these experts in Biblical knowledge to interpret Psalm 110:1. This psalm, ascribed to King David, refers to David’s son, that is, his descendant, as being “The Lord.” The word the psalmist uses is a translation of the Hebrew name for God. So David appears to refer to his grandson (many generations later) as The Lord, David’s God, Jehovah. How can this be, Jesus asks deadpan. As Jesus indicates by His criticism of these persons in vv. 46-47, they were not ready to acknowledge Him as Messiah.

Jesus is God and Man perfectly united in one Person. His Father is God, His mother a human being, a virgin named Mary, descended from a branch of David’s family. Hence He is at once a descendant of King David and David’s divine Lord and Messiah.

Read Luke 20:27-40

Perhaps you have heard the ancient joke about the Sadducees: They did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. So that is why they are sad, you see.

In Jesus’ day the Sadducees were a prominent group of Jewish religious leaders. They rejected the doctrine of the resurrection and refused to accept the existence of angels.

They confront Jesus with a tale about a woman whose husband died. To fulfill the Jewish Law, his six brothers married her by turn. (See Deut. 25:5-6.) Finally all died, leaving no children. They want to know whose wife she will be in heaven.

Do you think these people were sincerely interested in Jesus’ answer to the hypothetical situation they pose? The Sadducees’ trap was that if there is life after death, Jesus must say that she would be the wife of all seven men. This would promote a lifestyle condemned in the present age. Or, He must deny life after death. Either answer was bound to anger one side or the other.

Jesus almost brushes the question aside. He clearly teaches conscious, rational life after death. Marriage as an institution will cease because it will no longer be necessary to replenish the human race. We will recognize each other. Life goes on, immortal spirits clothed with deathless bodies, not bound in heaven by the physical limits of earthly life.

Jesus writes the Christian hope in big letters here. Aren’t you glad?

Read Luke 20:20-26

Jesus kept winning, and it frustrated these religious leaders. He becomes a marked man; they are out to get Him.

What was the trap in their question? If He said, “Yes,” the people, who hated Rome, would turn on Him. If He said, “No,” his enemies would report Him to Roman authorities as a traitor who advocated withholding taxes. They had no loyalty to Rome, but their hatred of Jesus was so fierce they were willing to take either side in order to be rid of Him.

Jesus avoided their trap, and His famous answer has entered our language, not only as a literal rule, but also figuratively as a metaphor. At first glance, Jesus’ response seems noncommittal. But it is not. It is a clear assertion. We are to pay our taxes.

The denarius, the coin Jesus asked them to show Him, would have had a likeness of Augustus or Tiberius Caesar on it. About ten years before this, the Roman senate voted Caesar Augustus divine powers. Nothing could have been more hateful to a good Jew than an image of a deified emperor. Yet, Jesus says, pay your taxes to such a government. You can obey the Roman state and still be a loyal Jew or Christian.

We owe tithes to the God who gives us life. We owe the state because we accept its protection and privileges. The two loyalties are not incompatible.

Read Luke 20:9-19

The religious leaders had no trouble seeing themselves in Jesus’ story.

The vineyard owner is God the Father. The vineyard is Israel, a figure of speech readily understood because the culture of grapes was common in Palestine. Jesus’ hearers knew very well that the “servants” referred to people like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the others we call Old Testament prophets.

When Jesus casts Himself as the vineyard owner’s son who gets killed, it is clearly a messianic designation. “Is this nobody from the back country of Galilee telling us He is the messiah?” the religious leaders scoffed.

We wonder why God would risk His Son like this.

That’s the whole point. The vineyard owner looks like a mad man to send his son into such a dangerous situation. That’s how much God loves us. He risked His only Son among desperate people to save us. In Jesus’ rejection and death is our opportunity for life.

Jesus ends with a solemn warning. Where do we get the idea that all there is to Jesus is the “meek and mild” part? God gives responsibility. The vineyard owner will come back. He expects a return on His investment. If we neglect to learn the lesson that we were so important to God that He put His only Son in harm’s way to save us, we bring severe punishment upon ourselves. Rejecting Him means death.