The Chosen Key Word in this Chapter is “Mite” it comes from the Greek Word “lepton” which means “the smallest copper coin.”
Religious leaders try to trap Jesus with question after question, and a poor widow quietly outgives everyone else in the temple. Welcome to Bible Life Basics Chapter Reviews, I am Chris and this is Mark 12.
Jesus tells the parable of wicked tenant farmers who kill the vineyard owner’s servants and finally his beloved son, applying it directly to the religious leaders plotting against Him. Pharisees and Herodians then try to trap Him over paying taxes to Caesar, and Jesus answers, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” leaving them marveling at Him. Sadducees, who deny resurrection, present a hypothetical designed to make the idea look absurd, and Jesus corrects them, explaining that in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage, since God is “not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.”
A scribe asks which commandment is the greatest, and Jesus answers, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart… and thy neighbour as thyself,” adding that there is no commandment greater than these. The scribe agrees wholeheartedly, and Jesus tells him he is “not far from the kingdom of God.” Jesus then questions how the scribes can say the Christ is merely David’s son, when David himself, speaking by the Holy Ghost, calls the Messiah “Lord.” Jesus warns the crowd to beware of scribes who love public recognition while devouring widows’ houses under a show of long prayers. Sitting near the temple treasury, Jesus watches people casting in their money, many rich people giving large sums, until a poor widow comes and drops in two small copper coins. The Greek word for this smallest denomination is “lepton.” Jesus calls His disciples and tells them this poor widow has given more than all the others, since they gave out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, gave everything she had to live on.
The widow’s two small coins meant far more to Jesus than the large, visible gifts of the wealthy, because the value of a gift is measured by what it costs the giver, not by its size. Loving God completely, as the greatest commandment describes, sometimes looks exactly like this widow’s quiet, total sacrifice.
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