The widows mite!!

Don't you just love it when you suddenly discover that every sermon you have ever heard on a particular verse is wrong?!! Amazing, How many more verses are there? Actually I appreciate that some people hate the idea of someone coming along and telling them that their assumptions are wrong. I guess I have a prophet's attitude!!

Here goes. The story of the widows mite appears in Luke and Mark. In both it is placed in the same ongoing narrative. It is placed on the Wednesday of passion week. Jesus is berating the Pharisees and the false teachers and the false practices.

I had always thought that in that passage of the widow Jesus said, "And her gift was seen by God!" Or something like that.

Anyway, the usual sermon is that this woman gave more than the others and this was praise worthy. Therefore we should give sacrificially too! However, that is all implied. Jesus doesn't say anything about her gift in terms of whether it was good.

In the passages before He is berating the Pharisees and in the passages after He talks about the Temple being torn down. The context is condemnation. In the verse immediately before he talks about those who devour widows houses, and then sees this living example of that practice!!

Jesus is not stopping in the middle of a tirade to say, "Now let's have a little study on giving!" He is furious that this woman is being made to pay a tax, placed on her by the religious order when the only way she can pay that tax is from everything she has!

The only other conclusion, if the "Sacrificial givers" are to be believed, is that we are to give everything we have to live on and totally trust in God!! But Jesus doesn't say to His disciples, "Do ye likewise!!"

There is another favourite of these people, and that is where David was offered a threshing floor and some bulls to sacrifice. David says he must buy them because he will not give out of that which cost him nothing. These "Sacrificial givers" twist this to say, "Therefore giving must be sacrificial!" Hold on, he didn't say anything about how much he paid for it, what he was saying was that his offering needs to be his offering and not someone else's!! There is not mention at all about this being "sacrificial" for David, Only that he needed to feel that he had earned it to give it. I have heard people actually use this verse to say that we should give even of the gifts that are given to us. I can assure you, these people are pharisees to the max!!