I almost forgot to post this! But conveniently I remembered before Ep 22 dropped, so that’s all that really matters right? Have a pleasant!
Mark 12:38-44; Hebrews 9:24-28; Psalm 146; 1 Kings 17:8-16
When I was preparing for this week’s sermon, and meditating on the lessons, there was a hymn running through my mind that just refused to go away. It was written by a woman named Elvina Hall back in 1865. The hymn, Jesus Paid It All, has a simple chorus: “Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe; Sin had left a crimson stain —He washed it white as snow.” What really stood out to me was those first two lines: “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.”
Our texts today all cover various parts of that topic. 1st Kings 17 is the story of the widow’s oil, which never ran out even though it was used for months on end. Mark 12 is about the widow who put all that she had in to the temple treasury. Hebrews 9 is all about Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice for sin on the cross.
I want to start there, in the letter to the Hebrews, today. In verse 28, “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people”. It’s not like the sacrifices made by the Israelites, things that had to be continuously repeated – he was the final sacrifice that all the other sacrifice were only previews and copies of.
As Christians, we believe and profess that, in the words of the song. “Jesus paid it all… sin had left a crimson stain –he washed it white as snow.” Our sin is forgiven in Him, and so we can have hope that when we confess our sin God, through the work of Jesus Christ, will forgive us. That’s the good news – the gospel message. But recall that I left out a line when I quoted that song this time around.
“Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe”. Here’s the part of the sermon you guys are not going to like me for. And I know what you’re thinking – ugh, Pastor is going to talk about money now. I’m just gonna zone out and think about my grocery shopping. Well, I’m not going to talk about money. I’m going to talk about something a whole lot more difficult to give to God – our whole lives.
I’m gonna be blunt with you here too, this message is as much for me as it is for y’all. I confess to God as often as I can that I am not giving all of me into His service. Part of that is just being human, but God’s call to us to give Him our whole lives – not just time, or money, or whatever – but everything.
So let’s look at this widow from Zarephath. Elijah had just proclaimed to King Ahab that God was withholding rain from the land until Elijah said it’d rain. There was sufficient drought in the land to dry up streams and make food extremely scarce. So God sends Elijah to this widow who is supposed to feed him.
This would be all well and good, except that the widow apparently has enough food for her and her son to eat one last meal together and then they’ll starve to death. This woman has every reason to believe she’ll die, but Elijah knows better. She tells her that God won’t let her run out of food, and she trusts that word enough to make the food for all three of them. God being true to His word, doesn’t let the flour and oil run out and they are able to live for what seems like three years.
The passage in Mark 12 is quite similar. A widow comes to the temple, and drops in 2 pennies. In human terms, that gift is insignificant – especially compared to the large sums the people around her were giving. But Jesus says that this widow is the one who gave the most. The NIV translates it “all she had to live on”, but a better translation is “she put in her whole life.” Those two pennies were just a symbol of a greater commitment, giving her whole life to God.
Both of these widows showed an amazing amount of trust in God to watch over them. One trusted God for food, the other for money. But both of their actions signify a deeper trust, where they trust God to watch over them in the midst of the chaos of life. They didn’t give from what they had, they gave from what they didn’t have, trusting that God would watch over them.
That’s what it’s really about – Trust. Do we, and I really do mean we, trust God enough to give everything that we are to Him. I’ll freely admit that there’s a lot of times I don’t, but I pray “Lord, help me to always trust you more”.
I want to be clear – this isn’t an obligation, it’s a thanksgiving. “Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe.” We can never pay back Jesus for paying our debt. But we can say thank you in a whole slew of different ways. 140 years after “Jesus Paid It All” was written, a man named Kristian Stanfill wrote a bridge part, “Oh praise the one who paid my debt and raises life up from the dead”. We’re called to praise God, and that doesn’t just mean singing. We can praise God with our money, our service, even how we live our lives. “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain – he washed it white as snow.”