Shane Hughes 10-26-25

My name is Shane. I'm one of the ministers here, and I'm a delight to have you with us. I want to just go ahead and call out the elephant in the middle of the room. We're going to talk about our obligation to give God. To give God with our money.

And probably the problem with that sentence as we experience it, is not so much that we have an obligation to give to God generously, but rather that we think that it's our money. I think the Western individualism, the philosophy that's exploded there, coupled with kind of American capitalism, makes us believe that what we work and we earn is ours to keep, to use, to spend on ourselves. But the narrative of scripture, both Old and New Testament, is clear that everything belongs to God. The earth is the Lord's, and everything is in it. And we serve a God who possesses everything and is generous to us beyond what we can imagine.

So we're going to explore the story of two widows. The widow that we just heard in this story and a widow that Jesus encounters. But before that, would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we're grateful. We're grateful for this time to gather together in a building that we did not build, nor did we pay for, and a church that we did not plant, although we have watered and cared for it, and a city in whose streets we did not build.

And, Father, we're grateful for those that have gone before us who have preserved your word through copyists and those who cared for it carefully. And, Father, that we might too share in this rich experience of hearing the word of God. Father, now I pray as we turn our hearts to your word, that you might pour through me the gift of preaching that might speak your truth in love to these, your people. It's together that the church says amen. I want to point out, like there's something that makes me very uncomfortable about this passage.

It's just a. It's a strange story, right? We. We read about a widow in Zarapith preparing her last meal, ready to watch her son die. And we're going to see another widow at the treasury, dropping her last two small copper coins.

It's worth less than a penny. And if our honor, if our reactions are honest, maybe part of my reaction is, should Elijah really be asking this woman for food? It makes me a little uncomfortable. But honestly, I think that's the discomfort where God meets us. Because I want to make the argument today that these stories are not about money.

These stories are about trust. These stories are about the God that we believe in. When everything else is falling apart. And so here's the story in Elijah. Elijah is this amazing prophet in the book of first Kings, and he encounters God in so many different ways.

His life is full of stories, stories of miracles. And, and in this moment, Elijah has just announced a drought over Israel. It's God's judgment on wicked King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. And so God sends Elijah to Brook Cherith, where he is protected. And, and the story tells us that ravens bring him food and he drinks water from the stream.

And we know ravens are one of the most intelligent animals in the world. And they've trained ravens in London to pick up trash, pick up cigarette butts and put them in containers that give them treats. Others have trained ravens to go and grab money and bring it back for bottle caps, because in a raven's mind, a shiny bottle cap is worth more than five or ten pounds, whatever. So these ravens are feeding Elijah, sustaining Elijah during the drought. It's miraculous provision.

But then there's this line in the text that said, after a while the brook dried up. And I want us to pause there. The brook dried up, the ravens left God's. God's provision ran out. Or at least that's how it seemed to Elijah.

And how many of us have been there because the job, you had a job and it dried up, and then you had savings and it dried up, and you had health or security or certainty and it dried up. And how much of it found ourselves sitting by that empty brook thinking, God, I thought you had me here. I thought you were in control of the situation. I thought you were providing.

But God says to Elijah, go to Zarabeth. I have commanded a widow there to provide you with food. Which is interesting because it's a widow in a foreign land during a famine. Now, in the ancient Near East, a widow who didn't have family to take care of them was as good as dead because they were, they were just kind of extra in terms of productivity. And so nobody really cared about widows.

That's why there's that command in, in James, to take care of widows and orphans in their distress. And God sends Elijah to a widow. That's God's provision plan.

It's almost as if Elijah was expecting God to send him to, like this wealthy merchant or a well stocked warehouse. If that was the case, Elijah would have been disappointed. God sends him to someone who has nothing. And I think that's because God's economy doesn't work like our economy works. When, when, when he arrives, Elijah founds this woman, this widow, gathering sticks to make a fire.

And so he asks her for water and. And she obliges him. And this is the hospitable move to make in the ancient Near East. If someone asks of you, you try to help them. And then he asks for bread.

And she says, look, I'm not going to lie to you on your God. All. All I have is a little bit of flour and a little bit of oil. And after I use it, my son and I are going to die because there is nothing left. And it's not hyperbole.

This mother is preparing to feed her child their last meal one more time before starvation takes them out. And you don't have to look far in this world to see the images that exactly reflect this story right here in the 1990s and early aughts in Ethiopia, now in Gaza. This is desperation in its rawest form. And Elijah says, don't be afraid. Go home and do as you have said.

But first make a small loaf for me, and then make something for yourself and for your son, because my God will feed us. And then this woman does it. Why does she choose to give her last meal to Elijah? I think it says something about this widow. Hospitality runs so deep and true through the very core of her that she chooses to give the last of what she said.

Now, Elijah said, my God's going to take care of us, but there hasn't been any evidence of that yet. And she does it anyway.

First, make something for me.

And can we be honest? That sounds harsh to me. To me, that sounds like religious exploitation. It sounds like prosperity preachers who tell poor people to send them money so that they can drive a Bentley or have a new jet. I don't like the way this sounds, but if you listen for what Elijah says, yes, for the Lord our God, the God of Israel.

The flour, the jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry. And the. Until the day the Lord sends rain on the land. And so the author of First Kings wants you to know this is not exploitation. This is invitation.

Elijah is inviting this widow into a miracle. And what he's saying is, I know this doesn't make sense. I know this violates every survival instinct you have, but if you trust God, you will discover something incredible. And in verse 15, she went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and for her family.

And it's interesting because that word, family in Hebrew, the midrash kind of the rabbi interpretation around this story, that word family could mean her son because that's all that's left, or it could mean her kin.

And so there's this kind of, this midrash, this interpretation that surrounds this text in the Jewish tradition that says not only did Elijah save this woman and save her son, but also saved her family, who had given her up for dead.

And then we fast forward several centuries, and Jesus is in the temple, and she's. And he's watching people give their offerings. Now, this is the thing you have to know about giving an offering in the temple in the first century. The first was you had to exchange your money because the money that you use for commerce was the Roman money, but that was not clean, that was not good. And so you had to exchange your money for temple money, which cost you something because people controlled the exchange rates.

Jesus has issue with that in another story. And then you take your temple money and you'd go, and they'd have these big offering receptacles, these big stone places, and they would have a jar inside. And to put your money in the jar, it had this large kind of metal funnel. And it was very noisy. In fact, if you dumped your coin ins, they would rattle around as they fell through that funnel into the jar so everybody could hear.

And there was actually a job in Jerusalem at the time where you could hire someone to bring a trumpet with them to the point where you're about to give your money, and then they would blare it, and then you dump your money in so everyone could see you. That's a big announcement. It's a big deal. I don't wonder how Jesus feels about this, because he talks about it. He says, don't give your money like that.

Don't even let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. And so he's watching these wealthy people dumping their change. It's Mark, chapter 12. Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.

A poor widow came out and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples to him and said to them, truly, I tell you this, this poor widow has put in more than all of these who are contributing to the charity or the treasury. For all. All of them have contributed out of their abundance. But she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she has, all she had to live on.

The rich are throwing in big amounts, bags of coins, making sure people, everyone sees their generosity and Then this poor widow comes in. She puts in two small copper coins, Tink, tink. Together they're worth hardly anything. And Jesus comments on what she sees, not from the rich, but from her Notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, foolish woman, she should have kept a coin for herself.

He doesn't say someone should stop her. This is irresponsible. He says, she gave more than everyone else.

And I think in the back of my mind, as Mark is telling this story, I think there's a subtext to it, because Jesus isn't really fond of this system of loud trumpets and dumping coins into metal funnels and knowing what your right hand announcing it as it goes. I wonder if Jesus is asking the question, maybe we shouldn't have systems that require the poorest and most vulnerable give their last bit. She is not giving her last two coins. What she is giving in the offering is her trust.

Because in God's economy, generosity isn't measured by the amount given. It's measured by sacrifice that's made. It's measured by the trust demonstrated. And so what do these two widows teach us? I wonder what God wants us to hear today.

First is clear, and I think you've heard it a million times before, but it's true. When you give, God doesn't look at your bank account. God looks at your heart. The rich give huge sums of money, but they gave out of their abundance. And so it didn't cost them anything.

They went home to full pantries and comfortable beds. The widow gives everything, and for her it was an act of worship that required total trust in God's provision. In Deuteronomy, chapter 15, it says, Give generously to them and do so without grudge, without a grudging heart. Because this is the Lord, your God's will, to bless you in all your work and everything you put your hand to. God cares about the posture of your heart as we give, when we give grudgingly, resentfully, or calculating if we're going to get anything in return.

Or are we giving joyfully, trusting that God sees, God knows and God provides. I think the second thing this text shows us is that generous giving is an act of worship that declares who we trust. When that widow in Zarephath gives her last meal to Elijah, she's married, she's making a declaration. What she's saying is, I trust the God of Israel more than I trust this flower. I trust God's promises more than I trust these coins.

Every act of generous giving is a Is it is a declaration of faith. It says, God, I believe you are who you say you are. I believe you see me, and I believe that you will provide for me. I think the third thing we see here is that God's provision comes in unexpected ways. I wonder what God was doing when he brought Elijah to this widow.

He obviously sees this widow's heart, this widow's trust, this widow's faith, and that's why God puts him here. But. But is Elijah. Is God bringing Elijah to the widow so that Elijah meets the widow? Or is Elijah God bringing the widow to Elijah so that the widow meets Elijah?

Does that make sense? Probably not. So let me tell you a story. I had a friend who had a sticker on the back of her car that asked the question, who rescued who? Maybe you've seen this on the back of somebody else's car.

It's, you know, because she. She fostered a dog from the shelter. And everyone says, well, you know, you saved that dog. You rescued that dog from a terrible life that might probably end poorly. You rescued the dog.

But she would say, ah, this dog means a lot to me. This dog has been my support and my comfort. She asked the question, who rescued who? Sometimes what we discover in the economy of God is that God's provision comes in unexpected ways. Ways.

God could have provided for Elijah in a million different places, but he chose the one place where he could provide something meaningful to someone that could provide faith back to him. Often God often provides for us through our obedience and giving. It's not in some transactional way. It's not give to get. It's not some sort of formula that if.

If I mail in $10 to God, I get a hundred dollars back. That's not how it works. But in this mysterious way, our stepping out in faith opens us up to the experience of God's faithfulness in ways that we could not have never imagined. The widow's flower and her oil doesn't run out. It's not because of a magic formula, but because God keeps promises.

So this is what it meant for Elijah, and this is what it meant for the widow in the temple. What does it mean for us? And I want to be careful here because these texts have been used in the past as kind of a license for manipulation. They're not permission for pastors or ministries to put pressure on people into giving money that they genuinely need for survival. This is.

That's abuse. That's not faith. And I had a friend just talk to me the other day that said we increased our food budget last month by 10% so that we could afford to buy the groceries we need. And it's week three and we've already blown through the entire budget. It's getting harder and harder to make ends meet in our world right now.

I get that. But these passages are a challenge. And they're a challenge to those of us, and I include myself, who live with such an abundance that we've forgotten what it means to clearly trust God for the prayer that we pray every Sunday for our daily bread. Because most of us are not facing a widow's choice. We're not down to our last handful of flour, but we are facing a different temptation and that is to hold tightly to what we have, to build bigger barns, to secure our own futures and to give only out of our excess.

Deuteronomy 15 warns us against this. If anyone is poor among you, your feather among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land, the Lord your God is giving to you. Do not be hard hearted or tight fisted toward them. Rather be open handed and freely lend them whatever they need. God calls us to open handed generosity, not tight fisted calculation.

And I have to believe that those disciples that are listening to Jesus wonder about a system that asks a widow to give her last two pennies, realize the truth of the work of the Spirit. And in Acts chapter two. Because in Acts chapter two, when there is an outpouring of the Spirit, one of the things that Luke records for us is that those that had property were selling it and they were giving it to the church so that the widows could eat. In fact, later in the book of Acts, when somebody realizes, hey, there are some widows that aren't getting the food that they need, they say, great, we're just going to create some deacons and their job is to make sure that we take care of everyone, but that everyone gets fed. And that's been the work of this church.

That's the work of this church in Myanmar, as Suzetta mentioned, one of the poorest places in the world, that the children there can get fed. This is why we partnered to create the Amaleen Hunger Coalition, so that we could make sure that the children in Abilene in the summer when there are no meals at schools can be fed. This is why we have a food pantry that allows for anyone that needs help to come and get help. But here's the most important thing, we don't do that because it makes us feel good, although it does. We give because we've been given to these two widows.

And our church are ultimately pictures of something far greater because it points us to an ultimate act of generous giving. It reminds us of that moment when God gave everything for us. And Paul writes in Second Corinthians, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that through his poverty, you might become rich. We were the ones that were starving. We were the ones that had nothing to offer.

And Jesus gave everything to invite us into kingdom life. And my suspicion is, is that when you. When you really understand that, when you can really grasp what has been given to you through Christ, it changes everything. It changes everything about what you can give in terms of your time or your talent or your treasure, even your entire life.

Generous giving is a joy. It's an opportunity to. To participate in what God is doing in the world, to experience his faithfulness in deeper ways. And the reality is your. Your generosity is going to outlast you.

It's going to outlast your life. Christians have been experiencing this for centuries. You know, the. The Christians that. That began the work of laying the great cathedrals in Europe began laying the foundation.

They knew that they would never see the churches that their grandchildren would worship in, but they did it anyway because they wanted to see something that would outlive their own experience. There is something very powerful about teaching generational generosity. Generational. I said that, right? Generate.

Those are hard words. Generational generosity. And it's kind of a challenge for our church because of some of our practices and the way our practices have changed. If you grew up in a church like I did, I. I honestly believed until I was like 10 or 12 years old, that after the Lord's Supper, you know, Jesus took the bread and then took the cup, and then they just passed a tray and everybody put money into it, because that was our practice at our church. It was pray pass.

Pray pass offering Pray pass. And I grew up watching my parents put a check every week into the contribution plate as it went by. And I remember my dad sitting down and writing a check at his desk every Saturday, folded it up, put it in his pocket so he was ready to give it on Sunday. The reality is that most of us don't give that way. In fact, 64% of Highland gives online, which is great, because that way you don't forget, right?

You can just kind of set it to repeat, and then it just. It just happens. It's easier that way. But the reality is that we don't have that experience for our children. Because we don't pass trays.

In fact, we don't even have trays. You just have the boxes in the back. And so we as a staff spent some time thinking and wondering and questioning about that and, and how could we teach our children how to give generationally. And then Robert came up and said, well, I've been doing this and so I wanted you. I've invited Robert to come up and share with us a little bit about that story about he has incorporated generational giving into to his family.

And so I'm glad you're up here, Robert. Go talk. Tell us. Thanks Shane. Good morning, Hyland.

I am the university minister here. But my story today is primarily as a dad and as Shane mentioned, trying to figure out how to incorporate giving. But the story doesn't at all start with me. And much like Elijah's story, it's got some uncommon characters. It contains a 13 year old girl, far away, a college student and lots of staff meetings.

One of our college students took an internship this summer in North Carolina and being in a new place, he was looking for a new church to attend. And so on one Sunday he went to a church that did pass trays and just down the row from him he saw a young girl, maybe 12 or 13 faithfully put some money in the tray as it was passed down. And he texted me and he said that really impacted me and made me wonder how college students at Highland are incorporating giving into their time here. And then I mentioned it to our staff and then we spent maybe too many meetings keeping on bringing it up and talking about this because I began to wonder, not just as a college minister, how are our students giving, but how am I engaging my children in giving. This past summer was also the time when Christian moved up from the nursery, he's three years old, into his kids.

And so now he joins us here in the worship service. And I hadn't thought about it until our student brought it up and until he saw that 13 year old girl give what it was like. And so a practice that we started that was spurred on by all of these faithful givers before us is that right before his kids worship, we go to the back, we go near those boxes, I take a couple of dollars out of my wallet and I give it to Christian and I say, Christian, do you know what this money is for? And on not cranky days, he remembers something and he says, he says this is for people who are hungry. Or he says this is for the donuts and the coffee or something that we have talked about that this giving goes to.

And then one of my favorite things that he's picked up recently as we move from that box is that he says, bye, bye, money. And I wonder if this is one way that Jesus is inviting us to be like the children in the kingdom. So for us, it looks like leaving a little bit early for his kids worship. But I wonder for you, for our college students, for our families, if you're single, whatever it is, what's one way that like Christian and the children among us, you can say bye bye, money?

And so maybe it's different for your family because developmentally your children are different. But we want to encourage you to begin to have those conversations to tell your children, why do you think it's worthwhile for us to give? And if you're a student in this room, ask your parents tonight at dinner, hey, mom, dad, why do we give to church? And why do we give? Why does this make a difference in our lives?

But let's begin to find practices that are formational to create the systems of generational giving that we've received in an online world where I don't. I haven't written a check. Last time I was when a plumber came and fixed our bathroom, that was the last time I had a check. I haven't written a check in months. How do we form the practices that allow us to form our children in meaningful ways?

What are the kind of conversations that you need to have in your household around generosity and why that's a value for you? Would you please stand for our benediction, Hyland? I believe the same God who generously gave to two widows to take care of their needs to will generously give to us that God will provide for all of our needs through Christ Jesus, our Lord, now and forevermore. Amen. Go in peace.