Of course, as we get into Mark chapter 14, we begin a new chapter and we're moving very quickly to the end of the book. Of course, that ending being the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord. And so in Mark chapter 14, beginning verse one, It says here, after two days was the feast of the Passover and of unleavened bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft and put him to death. But they said, not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people. being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper as he said it meet there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious and she break the box and poured it on his head There were some that had indignation within themselves and said, why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than 300 pence and have been given to the poor, and they murmured against her. And Jesus said, let her alone. Why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on me. Be of the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will, ye may do them good, but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could. She has come aforehand to anoint my body to the bearing. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever this gospel Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. And Judas Iscariot, one of the 12, went unto the chief priests to betray him unto them. When they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money, and he saw how he might conveniently betray him. I only intended to read a verse nine, but verse 11 being where I ended up, Jesus is going to die on the cross. If you are saved today, if you have read your Bibles, you know this is where he's going to end up. And we see right away that there is a plot to kill him. The chief priests, the scribes, they're seeking to take him by craft or by trickery, by deception. Some way they're going to get him. There is a conspiracy, if you will, out there to try to get him. He will indeed die, however, not until the time appointed. And I wish to submit to you today right away in this sermon a truth, and that is The sovereign God of the universe is over all the affairs of men. But men are not robots. He does not force men to do something against their will. And when Jesus does eventually die, God did not have to force the Romans or the Jews to go against their wishes. It's what they wanted all along. And indeed, here in this text in chapter 14, it wasn't God's timing for him to die. And all the things around were being orchestrated, set up, done, in such a way that the wicked men of that day, much like the wicked men of our day, thought and think that they're in the captain's chairs. They believe that they are the ones who are planning, scheming, and doing things according to their wishes when, excuse me, the reality is that it's God. who's in control of this world. You understand today that there are things happening all over this world, in my life, in your life, in the political world, in the business world, in the entertainment industry, in all of this, all of these things are going on, but everything is happening accordance to God's plan. You say, wait a minute, preacher, are you saying that God is behind all of this? What I'm saying is that God is sovereign over it all. It's either His directive will or His permissive will. He's either permitting it to happen or he's directing it directly to happen. But either way, nothing that happens in this world surprises him or catches him off guard. And so their reasoning, they said, oh, we can't do it today because there's a feast going on. That was no accident. That was no coincidence that all of this was taking place, this feast of the Passover. Because it was celebrated in Jerusalem, the city would have been overflowing with people. People had come from all over, including Galilee, where many of our Lord's followers were from. And these guys didn't want to start a riot, so they said, we'll wait. We'll wait. Well, of course you'll wait, because it's not God's time. It's not God's time. pillow your head tonight on this fact that God is sovereign over everything. He's sovereign over your life. He's sovereign over my life. He's sovereign over the life of this church. He's sovereign over the life of this country. He's sovereign over the life of President Trump. He's sovereign over the life of your loved ones. He's sovereign, beloved, over the events and the affairs of this world. The Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians. I mean, turn on the news. They'll get y'all worked up about everything, but turn it off. Read your Bibles and pray and be assured that God is sovereign over everything. You and I, we don't know what's going to happen Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or next week or however long it takes, the week after that, before they can ever get the ballots counted. You know, because this may get delayed, brace yourself for it, but realize this, that God is sovereign over that too. God is sovereign over all things. He was sovereign over this, the events of Mark chapter 14, verses one and two, and he's sovereign over our lives as well. He was sovereign over the events that took place then. He's sovereign over the events that take place today. And so it will be until time is no more. And guess what? God will still be sovereign over that as well. Before this old world was, there's God. And after this old world is gone, there's God. And we thank God for that. We rest at night on this fact. I really want to focus my attention today on verses three through nine. I've entitled this message, The Costly Perfume, Nothing Too Good for Jesus. Nothing Too Good for Jesus. We see the scene before us. Verses one and two is kind of what was going on behind the scenes. But now we're, Mark kind of brings us in to this scene. in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper. Bethany was a small town on the Mount of Olives, a little less than two miles from Jerusalem. Often, our Lord lodged there. It was the town of Lazarus, of Mary and Martha, of this Simon the leper. He had friends there. You and I, we know this sort of scenario. Jesus did indeed humble himself to be as a man. He did what men do. We go into a town, what do we do? We go where our friends are. We go, and maybe to the outskirts of town where we know somebody and go to their house. I just mentioned how that we stopped to visit Chrysomavia. You know, they're close to Winston-Salem there, but just outside in Lexington. There's a lot of things going on in Winston-Salem, but we spent our time in Lexington. There were a lot of things obviously going on in Jerusalem, but Jesus was in Bethany. The house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat. That's kind of an old way of saying that he sat at the table. He sat at the dinner table. He sat there. among friends. Simon the leper, Simon was his name. Leper was descriptive of the disease that had been part of his life. He was probably well known, but not a leper at this time. Would have excluded him from society. He probably warned that Jesus had healed. You remember Jesus had healed many, some of them being lepers. This would have been perhaps part of his fame. Oh, there's that Simon, Simon the leper. Yeah, the one that Jesus healed. Maybe that's why the name stuck. Might also be the reason why Jesus was so welcome at his house. When Jesus has done a great work in your life, your relationship with him changes, doesn't it? Maybe before you were saved, you knew of Jesus. You saw his name on a printed page of the Bible. You knew, you read about him, you heard of him, but you didn't have the kind of relationship in which you would have welcomed him in. Now, now that you've been saved, now that Jesus has done some wonderful work in your life, now, now he sits at your table. Now you've dined with him. Now you have great fellowship with him. Now there's a different kind of a fellowship. He's not just a word printed on a paper. You really have fellowship with him. Jesus was at your house this morning. Jesus is with you today. Jesus is no longer just a historical figure. If you've been saved, you know what I'm talking about. He did a great healing work on this leper and many others, no doubt. But all, and you said, well, maybe there's some of that speculation on this particular leper. Well, maybe so, but I do know this. He did have some relationship with him. And I know this also, that I have a relationship with him as well. And so does every child of God today. This Simon the leper was once unclean and now he's been clean. He's been, he, he once needed healing and now he's been healed. And though I was never sick with this disease of leprosy, I can tell you this. I may not have ever been known as David the leper. But I do know this, I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. I do know this, I once was a sinner with no hope, dead in my trespasses and sins, but Jesus has made me alive. Have you, have you been made clean by Jesus? Have you been healed by him? Is he a welcome guest at your table? Verse three there in that last part of the verse, it says, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious. And she break the box and poured it on his head. So in enters this woman. And she has this box, this alabaster box. Costly perfume. This was some sort of oil extracted from a plant. Some say it was costly because it was hard to get, and what she had there was precious. Mark doesn't tell us her name. She could have been any woman. John Gill and other commentators seem to think it was Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and it could be, because in John chapter 12, John chapter 12. Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. They made him a supper and Mary served, but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the odor of the ointments. And so, some commentators say this is the same event. Others think it's different. It really doesn't matter too much. What matters is that this could have been any woman. It could have been anybody, really. Martin doesn't see fit to name her. He writes, under the inspiration of spirit, Her text says she had an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious. I remember when I was a teenager, I've told this story here before, but my grandmother, my mom's mom, she was intrigued by this story in the gospels. and a missionary to Greece, Brother John Henson. We've had him on the prayer list for a while. He's had quite a problem with his health lately. I keep praying for him. He's always been a good friend to me and an able defender of the faith. But Brother Henson, Back in those days, he was active in the ministry and he was doing missionary work in Greece. And so he brought my grandmother an item made out of alabaster. I recall, of course, my grandmother's been gone now for 10 years. She died 10 years ago. But I remember how happy she was to hold something like this woman held to be able to have it to compare. It was pretty interesting to see that. That wasn't what was so special. The alabaster box wasn't So much there, she broke that. This woman here, March 14, she broke it or opened a box for what was inside is what she was after. And she poured this precious ointment on Jesus. It was an act of love and reverence, only the best for the Savior. And right there, we see in our text, that as she poured it on his head, verse four says, and there were some that had indignation within themselves and said, why, why was this waste of the ointment made? Some were, as the legacy standard says, some were indignantly remarking to one another, why has this perfume been wasted? They started the gossip, they started the slander. They said, what is going on here? This woman is wasting this precious ointment just to pour it on his head. Seemed like a terrible waste to them anyway. In fact, in verse five it said, for it might have been sold for more than 300 pence. Might have been sold for 300 pence. The Greek, that is, 300 denarii. A denarius was approximately a laborer's daily wage. So what she took and she poured out on Jesus could have been sold for 300 denarii, approximately equal to what it would have taken to work for almost a year, 300 days. The cost, that's the value of it. Could have sold that woman and given it to the poor. What are you thinking? Why is she going to waste this? Is she crazy? They criticized, they slandered, they gossiped. For what she was doing. Why was this waste of the ointment made? They murmured against her. But Jesus said, hold up a minute. You and I, we don't have ointment to pour on Jesus. We don't have costly perfume in an alabaster box to physically take like this woman did. You and I will never have the opportunity to be where she was at that day. But let me tell you, we do have the opportunity to spend or be spent for the Lord. It's not all about money. It's not all about finances. where we take and we look at this text and we see a lot of things are going into this. Yes, money, but also time. 300 denarii, 300 days of work went into this and it's all getting poured out. You could have spent your time, your money, your resources somewhere else. What are you doing? And isn't that the way it happens? Sometimes they criticize. People will sometimes criticize you for the way that you serve the Lord. Why do you get up and go to church on Sunday morning? Don't you know, it's a beautiful day. Why do you, why do you spend time in your day for reading your Bible or, or or pray? Why is it that you'll spend your talents playing the piano in a small church? Why do you pastor or preach or spend time studying? Go to a Bible conference. On and on they go. Whatever it is in your life, whatever it is in my life, these acts of service and worship are things in your alabaster box. Whatever you have there is precious. if it's spent or being spent for the Lord, you see. The criticizers will come and they'll say, oh, don't you know, that life, that money, that time, that energy, you could have done it this way or that way. What did Jesus say there? In verse six, Jesus said, let her alone, why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will, ye may do them good, but me you have not always. She hath done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint my body, To the bearing, verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. This is the rebuke that Jesus gave to those who criticized her. It is quite the rebuke. The crowd had their opinions. The naysayers, the critics, the slanderers, they had their rebuke. You and I, we must take our stand on God's word in life and say, look, we only have a short time in this life. I've got to take my box. I've got to spend what I can for the cause of Christ. Over in Galatians chapter one, Galatians chapter one and Verse 10, Paul says to the churches of Galatia, he said, for do I now persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ. You think about this. We must do what we can to please the Lord, even if there are others who criticize. They say, well, you, you know, that's not the best way to do things. You should have done it this way. Look, think of this. Within that crowd, there may be even, excuse me, reading it in the text, it's kind of hard to say for sure, but But one of the ones who was there, and perhaps maybe even the instigator in all of this, was one Judas Iscariot. As he was hypocritically being what he was, now understand something, we know who he was because we read the text. We know You know, as they say, hindsight is 20-20. You got to understand something. Being where they were, they didn't see it. I mean, he walked, talked, acted like any of the other apostles. In fact, they trusted him with the money. And so maybe that could have given her some pressure. Oh, well, he's good with money. Maybe I am doing this wrong. Whatever the case may be, we know how his story ended. What I'm trying to encourage you is to stick with the scriptures, keep serving the Lord, even if people laugh at you, make fun of you, whatever it may be. And look at the reason why she was doing it. Verse eight, Jesus said, she hath done what she could. She has come a forehand. to anoint my body to the burying. She's come before to anoint my body for burial. She was on that side of the cross. And in faith, she was looking forward. She showed great faith that day, taking that costly perfume, that costly ointment, and anointing Jesus with it. When it could have been sold, She certainly couldn't just go and get more of it easily. Here we are, we read of her. Just as Jesus said would happen, what she's done is spoken of for a memorial of her. In faith, she was doing service for the Lord as she looked forward to what was about to happen. You and I, we're on this side of the cross. We're on this side of the burial, this side of his resurrection. With faith, we look backwards. Again, we don't have a physical alabaster box. At least most of us don't. My grandma did. We don't physically anoint our Lord with oil. There are some things we do that'll cost us. Even our daily service to him, As we think about bringing this to a close, Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12. Beginning verse one, he says, I beseech you brethren, therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies in living sacrifice. Holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable, perfect will of God. Lay it all on the altar, put it all in the alabaster box, give it to the Lord. It's costly, but I guarantee he'll bless. There's nothing too good for Jesus. Are you willing to live for him? Are you willing to die for him? Nothing, I say nothing, is too good or too costly for our Lord. And that's the lesson that we get from this woman and that precious oil in her alabaster box. Let's be dismissed in prayer. And I'll ask...