Mark 6:37-42 “But He answered and said to them, "You give them something to eat." And they said to Him, "Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give them something to eat?" (38) But He said to them, "How many loaves do you have? Go and see." And when they found out they said, "Five, and two fish." (39) Then He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass. (40) So, they sat down in ranks, in hundreds and in fifties. (41) And when He had taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and the two fish He divided among them all. (42) So, they all ate and were filled.”
We have already looked at the above quoted miracle in the previous section to show our Lord’s generosity, but there is something else that I want to highlight in this passage regarding the financial aspect of our Lord’s ministry. For I want you to notice that the disciples stated that two hundred Denarii was not enough to purchase food for that multitude. The reason the disciples made that comment, was because that’s the amount of money that they had on hand. In today’s value that amount equated to approximately one hundred thousand rand, and as we have already seen, that was not enough money to buy food for that size crowd. But the point that I wanted to get across from this passage, is that there was at least two hundred Denarii in the money box that Judas carried. So where did that amount of money come from? After our Lord Jesus left the family’s carpentry business to preach the gospel, He no longer earned an income as a carpenter, and so He had to have another source of income. Our Lord Jesus as the Head of the church, has commanded that those who preach the gospel are to live from the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:14). And so our Lord Jesus practiced what He preached, for as one who preached the gospel our Lord lived from the gospel.
Luke 8:1-3 “Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him, (2) and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities--Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons, (3) and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for Him from their substance.”
From the above quoted passage of scripture the Holy Spirit reveals to us that there were many that God the Father raised up to financially support our Lord’s ministry, and some of those individuals were very wealthy. For example, Lazarus, Mary and Martha were three siblings that had inherited a substantial amount of wealth from their parents, and they used their wealth to support our Lord’s ministry. You will recall the incident when Mary poured the alabaster flask of spikenard on our Lord Jesus before He went to the cross (Mark 14:3-5). That flask could have been sold for three hundred denarii, which equates to approximately one hundred and fifty thousand rand in today’s value. And so for Mary to own such expensive oil is a clear indication as to just how wealthy they were. When we read the account of our Lord inviting the rich young man to sell all he had to give to the poor and follow Him (Matthew 19:21), we think erroneously that our Lord instructed all rich people to do the same. But that is not the case at all, because Jesus only encouraged those whom He called to the ministry to leave all and follow Him. Zacchaeus would be another case in point, because he only gave half of his wealth away and kept the rest (which was still a substantial amount of wealth), and our Lord said of Zacchaeus that salvation had come to his home i.e. he became one of the Lord’s disciples (Luke 19:9). And so we see that it was because of individuals like that giving into our Lord’s ministry, that there was an amount of one hundred thousand rand in the money box at the time that Jesus fed the five thousand. Now that would not have been the only occasion when our Lord’s ministry team carried that amount of money with them, but rather that would have been the norm for His ministry’s finances at any given point in time. So the question is asked, why the Lord needed that much money. The answer to that question is that Jesus had a very large ministry team that walked with Him. It was not just the twelve apostles that walked with the Lord; for you will recall that He sent out seventy disciples at one time to minister (Luke 10:1). And when Jesus called His disciples to follow Him He would always instruct them to leave all behind (Mark 10:21), and many of our Lord’s disciples had families to support. And so the finances that came into Jesus ministry were used by Him to supply the needs of His disciples and their families. Clearly we can see that during our Lord’s two years of ministry there were vast amounts of money that were given into His ministry.
John 13:29 “For some thought, because Judas had the money box, that Jesus had said to him, "Buy those things we need for the feast," or that he should give something to the poor.”
Although Judas controlled the money box, he distributed that money at the instruction of Jesus. The above quoted passage of scripture reveals to us that Jesus would instruct Judas what to purchase on behalf of the ministry team. But this passage also reveals to us that the finances that came into our Lord’s ministry were not solely used to supply the needs of His disciples, but also to minister to the poor. It was not uncommon for our Lord to instruct Judas to give to the poor at all hours of the day. It was late at night in the above account when the other disciples naturally assumed that Jesus had instructed Judas to go and give to the poor. In fact it seems that the majority of the money given into our Lord’s ministry was given to the poor. For when the disciples complained about the extravagant waste of money, when Mary poured the expensive fragrant oil on our Lord, their comment was not that the money could have been used to supply their needs but rather given to the poor (John 12:5), thus indicating that the norm in our Lord’s ministry was to give to the poor. And so in the sections we have discussed thus far, we have seen just how generous our Lord Jesus was toward others, and we have seen how He supplied the needs of all His disciples, and we have also seen just how frequently Jesus gave to the poor.
Michael E.B. Maher
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