How Do You Measure It?

by Scott Vance on January 20, 2021

Luke 20:41–21:4 (ESV)
41 But he said to them, “How can they say that the Christ is David’s son? 42 For David himself says in the Book of Psalms,
“ ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
43 until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’
 
44 David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?” 45 And in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples, 46 “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, 47 who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
 
21:1 Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, 2 and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. 3 And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. 4 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
 
How can you measure someone’s engagement in worship?  Do you look for what you can see; raised hands, clapping to songs, nodding heads, hands folded, heads bowed, and eyes closed in prayer?  Do you listen for signs of participation; an “amen”, a mummer of approval, a voice lifted in song?
What about a person’s heart?  How can we know that worship is taking place in a person’s heart if we can’t see or hear the signs that we use to measure engagement in worship?
 
We often measure people by the standards of our own choosing, but what we need to remember is that God’s way of measuring is utterly different than ours.
 
Our passage records one of the few questions that Jesus asks of others.  Jesus is testing the crowd’s measurement of the identity of the Messiah.  You see the people were expecting the son of David, the Messiah, to be this military leader who would elevate the people of God and bring military victory over Israel’s enemies.  That’s their measurement of true messiahship, but that’s never been the image of the Messiah in Luke’s Gospel.  In fact, Luke’s Gospel has given us a radically different image of the Messiah than what the people expected.  In Luke’s Gospel, the Messiah is the one who brings healing to the whole world, the one who opens wide the kingdom of God for all who will simply come (Jew or Gentile), and ultimately, as we will soon see, the one who puts our greatest enemies under His feet; sin and death itself.
 
The people’s measure for the Messiah is radically limited and distorted compared to the Lord’s, and we see that in Jesus' remarks concerning the scribes and poor widow.
Jesus warns the crowd not to measure their worth by the standards of the scribes.  The scribes love their position and status in the culture and abuse it for their own gain.  But Jesus says that God sees and is measuring them by His scale, and they are found wanting.
 
And by that same scale of measurement, God sees the heart of the poor widow in her sacrifice and worship as she gives her two coins, “all she had to live on”.  All others gave out of the abundance of what they could afford, but in faith and trust, this poor widow gives all she has.
 
I’m challenged by this passage in two ways.  First, to simply be open to Jesus being bigger than my box.  Far too often I measure out a box and try to make Jesus fit into it.  Jesus’ presence and work in our lives is beyond our ability to measure and we must be willing to follow Him past our ability to calculate the outcome.
Second, I’m challenged to measure my value and worth by God’s standards rather than that of the world.  That’s something that is easy to say, but far too often we often measure ourselves against others and against the expectations of our culture (including Christian culture).
 
How do you measure your value and worth?  Is it in comparison to others and to the world, or do you measure your value and worth by God’s love for you?
Where is Jesus calling you to trust and follow Him beyond what you can measure?
 
God bless you and know that you are constantly in my prayers!
Scott

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