Please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 26. Matthew chapter 26. And we're trying to not begin the service with announcements by having them on the screen ahead of time, but I should mention, and I don't think I put it on a slide, I should mention that I was asked a while back to fill the pulpit in at the Calgary Free Presbyterian Church next Sunday morning. So we'll be gone for that weekend. And Barry has agreed to minister the word of life here in our absence. So we're thankful for that good opportunity that we have to be able to serve the saints in Calgary in the time of their need. So pray for Barry, pray for us, if you will, when we're traveling. And for David also, he's preparing the Sunday school lesson for next Sunday morning and a reminder to come for our Sunday school class at 10 o'clock. Matthew chapter 26, we will read verses 1 through 13. And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of Man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests and the scribes and the elders of the people unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety and kill him. But they said, not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people. Now, when Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, there came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment and poured it on his head as he sat at meat. But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, to what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much and given to the poor. When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, why trouble ye the woman? For she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you, but me ye have not always. For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this that this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her. Let us pray. Gracious and loving Father, we come unto thee in the name of Christ, the great head of the church. Seek a blessing for our souls as we desire to uphold the name of Christ, to exalt his name above all names. And we ask, Lord, that Thou wouldst be pleased to grant that we may be humbled by Thy Holy Spirit to take heed unto Thy Word, to respond to Thy Word by faith, and to grow in love for our gracious Redeemer, who has first loved us. We pray, Lord, that Thou wouldst be pleased to remember us and undertake for the preaching of Thy Word, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Beloved congregation, the memorial that Joshua set up, as he was instructed by the Lord, was rather dramatic. It was a dramatic event. The waters were parted similar to the way in which the waters of the Red Sea had been parted, the waters of Jordan. were divided and the people passed through on dry land. And on this occasion, the Lord has Joshua do something very special. He says, take stones from the middle of the river, large stones that you can put up on your shoulder, not just pebbles, but large stones, one for each of the tribes, set them up as a monument or as a memorial on the other side. And the significance of that, of course, was that the stones that were taken from the middle of the river would have been all smooth stones. They would have eroded by the water passing over them for years and years. And so you would be walking through, the children of Israel might be walking through past Gilgal and saying, what are all these smooth stones doing on the land? How did they get here? Well, what a great opportunity that was for their descendants to say, well, your grandfather, your great-grandfather passed through the river right here. And this was all dry land by the miraculous work of God. He parted the waters, and they passed through on dry land to deliver us into the land that was given us by promise. What a tremendous opportunity. And the Lord says very specifically, that's why it was done. So here, as we've concluded this reading in Matthew 26, we've read about the mention of another memorial. And it's a memorial that maybe is often forgotten. It's a memorial that's striking in its understanding, maybe in the way of conviction, in what this woman Mary does for the Lord Jesus Christ. And it should be remembered by Christ's own design. So we have in these verses, and we have a division here that could have been separated maybe into two or three sermons, but we have, I see here in this passage, three preparations. We have a preparation for death, we have a preparation for murder in verses three, four, and five, and then the remaining verses, we have a preparation for burial. So when we look at the preparation for death, the Lord Jesus says that when, or Matthew says that when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover. The feast is coming up very quickly, very imminently, two days away. And then he informs them, as he has alluded before, he says, the Son of Man is betrayed to be crucified. Very dramatic words. Again, the Passover was also a type of a memorial, a remembrance that the Lord had delivered his people out of the clutches of Pharaoh and the nation of Egypt and had redeemed them out of that land. And so they were coming up to that annual event that was part of their culture and heritage. And Now the Lord says, in addition to that, the Son of Man is going to be crucified. As we think of those words, we don't have the response of the disciples here at all. We don't know what they thought of those words or how seriously they took them. We know, as we continue reading, that when Christ rose from the dead, it was a huge surprise to them. When Christ was actually sentenced, when he had his trial, they were all terrified and they withdrew. They were scared of what was happening, and it wasn't going at all the way that they expected, even though Jesus has repeatedly been saying, I'm going to be crucified, I have to die. Even Peter said, no, be that far from you. So when you think of your own life, are you preparing for death? When you're 20 or 30, you think death is far away. You know that it could happen any time. When you reach your 60s, you start thinking, you know, it's coming. It's coming pretty soon. And so you begin to make preparations. You get a will together to dispose of your estate, and you can make funeral arrangements now. You can decide where you're gonna be buried and all those sorts of things ahead of time. You begin to take those things a little more seriously. But beloved, none of you can anticipate how you're going to die. Nobody can. Nobody can. Even somebody who has terminal cancer could die of a car accident or a heart attack or something else. Nobody can finally say how you're going to leave this life. But the Lord Jesus did. He knew exactly how his life would end. And it was going to end extremely dramatically. And he, in his humanity, he shrank back from that, as we're going to see in the Garden of Gethsemane. But he spoke very openly about it to his disciples. And he kept reiterating that, that they should understand it. So he knows not only that he's going die the cursed death of the cross as we've been seeing in Galatians, but also that it's going to come about, he says here, by betrayal. I'm going to be betrayed, and betrayal always involves someone you love. He's gonna be betrayed and then crucified. So he lays all this out for the disciples. And so there is the preparation for death, Christ's own being mindful of it. If you're still reading or continuing on in our Bible reading schedule, in John, we're in John right now, we're coming to the end of the chronological reading of the scriptures. We're in John chapter, what are we, John chapter 17. So not too long ago, we were in John 12. We're gonna come to John 12 in a minute. But John 12, think about the Gospel of John, what is it, 20 chapters? Over half of it is taken with the last few days of the life of Jesus Christ. Over half of it. John is obsessed, in a good way, with the love, because he's the apostle of love, it's the gospel of love, and obsessed with the love that the Lord Jesus Christ has for his church, even as he's approaching his death. So all those discourses that the Lord Jesus has, I'm the vine, I'm the door, he's saying all those things after the Lord's Supper after the Passover, and he's instructing his disciples. It's very remarkable how the Lord prepares for his own death. He has compassion on his disciples at a time when you would think he'd be overwhelmed emotionally with his coming crucifixion. So there's the Lord preparing for death, even reminding himself and his disciples what's going to happen. We read next this preparation for murder, and it's vicious. It is diabolical. In verses 3 to 5, then assembled together the chief priests and the scribes and the elders of the people under the palace of the high priest who is called Caiaphas. So here they come together, all the great leaders, all the religious leaders. They're meeting at the home of the high priest. So probably, somewhat clandestinely, they're having secret meetings. They're not going to do this too openly, but they have a public plot. Maybe, somebody has suggested that maybe they wanted to kill him secretly. Maybe they wanted to corner him somewhere in a building and just stab him or something and get him out of the way. He was such a threat. Notice at the beginning of the chapter we're told that Jesus has finished his teaching. He's concluded everything that he's going to speak and especially he's been exposing the sins of the Pharisees and the scribes. So here they've had enough and they are going to plot They only see one solution and the Lord has provoked within them an intense hatred of the Lord Jesus Christ. Intense hatred. The only solution is to kill him. That's the only thing that they can see. They refuse to acknowledge his divinity in any way. Christ has been offending them by teaching the truth. He's exposed their hypocrisy openly and they're not going to stand for that. And beloved, we should remember that it is a good thing to hear the Lord expose your hypocrisy. We can be like the Pharisees and say, well, now you've gone to Medlin. These words are good for others, but... I don't need to hear this. I'm good in so many other ways. Why are you focusing on this one area of my life that I'm having difficulty with or that I just don't want to yield to you? And isn't that the natural response of the heart? There's so many good, there's so many things I'm advancing in my spiritual life. There's so many things I'm making great headway. There's so many things that I'm learning about the Lord Jesus. but you wanna focus in on this one thing that I'm reluctant to let go of. And the Lord does that. He does that if he loves you. He focuses in on the thing that you're having trouble with because you don't need help in those other areas, perhaps, in the same way. So beloved, just a reminder that to listen when the Spirit speaks to you through his word. So you're not listening for what other people need. Remember the Lord in Matthew 5 said, agree with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art in the way with him. And in that way you may consider God himself as your adversary. He's coming after me. And why? Well, because he wants you to listen. Because he wants you to pay attention. Because he wants you to be holy. Because you're bearing the name of his son. He wants you to obey him with a gospel heart. and he wants to purge sin from you. That's the desire of God for his people. It's the desire of Christ. It's the desire of the Holy Spirit. But here, these men have refused to listen. There's no way that God is going to get an inch in my life, or Christ, certainly. They pretend to love God, and so they plot, but they plan to use trickery and treachery. Subtlety is the word that's used here. And they're gonna use devious means to kill the Lord Jesus. But they're being very, very wise about it right there. We can't do it during the Passover because the people are gonna riot. The people love the Lord Jesus. They admire him in some respect. But, so we better not do it around the Passover. There's gonna be a riot. There's gonna be big trouble. So let's just wait. So that's their plan. Isn't it interesting how their plan changes when Judas comes to them and says, I'll betray him. Boy, didn't that play out nicely for us, they would think. Isn't this a wonderful providence, they would say, that our plan is going better than we thought. So here they have this wicked plan. In all of this context, then, Matthew relates these things. There's Christ's preparation for death, the high priest, the priests, and the scribes are preparing for his murder. And then we have this amazing incident about preparation for Christ's burial. And we have here a very remarkable story, and it got the attention of the disciples, got the attention of the Lord Jesus, what this woman did. We'll review the circumstances here. Christ is in Bethany. He's not in Jerusalem at this time. He's gone to what we might call his little retreat. He loves Bethany. He loves Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Lazarus, one of his best friends, we read in John chapter 11 when he raises him from the dead. It just seems to be his little getaway place. And it's a tiny little town. It's not much to speak of. He goes to the house of Simon the leper. We don't really know anything about him. But he's identified by some form of leprosy. and Martha and Lazarus are present. Now, I know there's a little bit of disagreement about whether this is the same incident, but if you just turn over to John chapter 12, as I mentioned earlier, John chapter 12, it says, I think even, especially if you have a harmony of the Gospels, where you have the Gospels lined up side by side, I think the similarities are very, very remarkable. Chapter 12, verse one of John, then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. So the problem is he says six days and Matthew says two days, but this could have taken place earlier and just recorded later by Matthew. There they made him supper, and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him, and then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and so on. So I believe that these are parallel passages, and so I'll be referring to this woman, Matthew doesn't mention her by name, we'll be referring to her as Matthew, as Mary, who Matthew calls, does not name. So Martha and Lazarus are present. As we've heard before, Martha is the one, or Mary, Martha is the one in the kitchen. She likes to serve. She's had to learn some lesson about serving. But she is serving, and Lazarus's friend is present also. And so Mary is the one who comes and anoints Jesus with this precious ointment. And it gets the attention of everybody because of what she's done. William Hendrickson, in his commentary, says, the true meaning of what happened here will never be grasped until it is realized that when Mary was pouring out her perfume, she was also pouring out her heart, filled with genuine religious love, gratitude, and devotion. What she did here, she did because she loved the Lord Jesus Christ. And she seems to have done it impetuously on a certain level. Charles Spurgeon, preaching on this text, talks about how it is good for you sometimes to do impetuous things. if it's for the love of the Lord. Sometimes we can say, well, I wanna do great things for God and just rush in where angels fear to tread, and often that's just a wrong kind of impetuosity, but he really emphasizes the idea of acting based on your love for the Lord Jesus Christ. And regardless of what others think or how they view that act. Because what happens is that Judas is the one who complains. In John 12, verse 4, it's Judas who says, what is this waste? This money could have been sold for 300 pence. Well, here's John also says that it's Judas who's the keeper of the bag. He's the treasurer. He's the one to whom money is very, very important. So he evidently recognizes the perfume. He knows that it's very costly. Maybe it's because of the packaging that it's in. I don't know. But he somehow knows that this is very, very costly and that it's worth 300 pence. And a pence or a denarii is, One day's wage. One day's wage. So here in Alberta, we recently got a $50 minimum wage. So if we just take the minimum wage, probably most of us are making more than that. The minimum wage, if you multiply that times eight hours in a day and 300 days, you come up with $36,000. That's how much we would value that perfume at today. $36,000 just for perfume. So I think if you're buying any kind of perfume, it seems expensive enough. But this is amazing. And what put it into Mary's head that she should do this? We didn't even know where she would have got that money. but $36,000. And she's going to buy perfume not for herself. She's going to pour it, John says, over her feet, but I think Matthew says over her head. So that is, she pours it on his head, the whole thing, maybe breaks the bottle, pours it on his head, all the way down to his feet. And you can imagine a $36,000 perfume is going to fill that whole house with a smell, with an odor. Christ is drenched in it. And it's, I don't know, that much perfume. Sometimes you feel like you can put on too much perfume just with an extra dab. But here the whole house is filled with this wonderful smell. And it must have been a very wonderful smell. Well, Judah says, come on, $36,000. That's an awful lot of money. What about the poor people? And notice, not just Judas. We can think, okay, Judas is the one who betrays Jesus. He's the one who's covetous. He's the one who's greedy. He's gonna betray Jesus for money. But Matthew says all the disciples, right? All of the disciples. Verse eight, but when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, to what purpose is this waste? So Judas starts it, again, a reminder of what you say can affect other people, but Judas starts it, says, what about the poor people? Think of how many poor people you could feed with $36,000. And all the other disciples say, exactly. Yeah, Judas says this. And here she's just wasting it on perfume, and they call it waste. And the whole time she's just filled with love and adoration and devotion from her deepest heart for the Lord Jesus Christ. This is something, understand Mary here, this is something she has to do. This is something that she must do for the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has prompted her, and she's gone in faithful obedience. So here is the covetousness of the disciples and the love and adoration of Mary towards her Savior. And they couldn't see that. And sometimes when we're lost in, and this is where where your heart and your head should work together. Your doctrine should produce this kind of love. We never separate doctrine from life, right? It should produce whatever you know about the Word of God No matter how detailed and deep and maybe scholarly to some people, it should always produce love towards the Lord Jesus. When it doesn't do that anymore, you just pull back and say, OK, I need to think about how this is important to my soul, how this is good for me. and how I can use it to worship the Lord Jesus. All your study of the scripture should lead to worship of the Lord that you learn about. And that's what Mary was doing. So Christ then defends Mary. He's not very happy with the disciples, is he? When Jesus understood it, verse 10, he said unto them, why trouble ye the woman? For she hath wrought a good work upon me. She has done a good work here, a work of faith, but it's a good work. And she has done this good thing for me, and you're going to trouble her? Jesus is not very pleased with them. Why are you going to accuse her this way? And Jesus, in effect, says this is not about money. This has nothing to do with money. And quit picking on her. She hath wrought a good work upon me. And he says a very interesting thing. The poor will always be present. Verse 11, for ye have the poor always with you, but me ye have not always. So the Lord isn't saying here, forget about poor people. You shouldn't be kind or generous to poor people. But he's saying you have plenty of opportunity to serve poor people. So here this woman is devoted to me, she's worshiping and adoring me, and what are you doing with your money, boys? You must have lots of money. Why don't you use your money to serve the poor? Go ahead. But there'll always be poor people for you to help. But Jesus said I'm not gonna be around much longer. I'm about to be taken away and I've been telling you that. And you haven't been listening, you haven't been asking, you haven't been pursuing what I mean by that. You've just been putting it out of the way as we so often do, right? So there's something that's just kind of uncomfortable. We try to shove it off to the side. I don't really want to learn about that because it's very uncomfortable. and that's what they seem to have been doing with the doctrine of Christ's death and resurrection at times, but he's telling them that I'm gonna die, and they just keep refusing to hear. In fact, he says, this is done, she has done this for my burial. Verse 12, for in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. She's preparing for my death. And we don't know how much Mary was aware of that connection. She may have been one of those that was paying attention more than the disciples, that could be. She might know that these things are coming fast upon her Savior. She might know that these things are coming up. And all the more she's thinking, I need to do something for the Lord. Or she may just have done it out of that conviction that I want to do this because I love the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus draws that meaning. So beloved, when you think of that, not just the impetuous thing that you do, the thing that you don't stop and analyze. Here again, Spurgeon says, sometimes we stop and we analyze our way out of doing something, right? We think, oh, we should do this or we should do that. And we say, well, what would happen if I did? And then we analyze the whole thing to the point where we just don't do anything at all because we've overthought the thing. But beloved, if you can say this is out of love for the Lord Jesus, and you go ahead and do it, will the Lord receive that? Not only that, but he brings added meaning to it. Then, if Mary is not aware of the significance of what she's done, the Lord says, she's done this for my burial. This is in preparation for my death. So a lot of times you may do something purely out of love for the Lord Jesus, serving the brethren, administering this church purely out of love for Christ, and you can say, I just felt that I had to do that. And I did it out of love, not in disobedience to his commands, not doing my own will, but doing the will of him that died for me. I want to do it out of that love for Christ, and Christ will bring good out of it. Now, can you expect others to criticize you for it? That's what happened to Mary. Even the disciples who knew Jesus, who had learned at His feet for three years, had been taught of Him, and they were indignant with her. And Jesus says, cut it out. Don't pick on her. I love her. And she did this because she loves me. And the Lord says he defends her for that action that everybody else seems to think is out of the way. And she receives this blessing then from the Lord in verse 13. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her." So there's a very strong connection between what Mary has done with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says this is part of a gospel remembrance. It's going to happen every time somebody reads straight through the book of Matthew. They're going to make that connection. But it should be a part of our gospel memory. How do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you really love him more than all these? And we really are idle factories where there's so many things that creep up in the place of the Lord Jesus. And to have the love that Mary shows towards Christ is extremely rare. That's why it's a memorial here. It's a memorial to remind you that Christ, the Holy Spirit, produces that love in the hearts of his people. That is possible. That you don't say, well, I could never love the Lord Jesus that much. And yet the Lord calls you to it. You can't say, well, I can never be a Mary. You must say, I want to be a Mary. Maybe you never could be a Mary, but I want to be. and to pray for the Lord to deliver you from the idols. The idols, whatever stands in the way of your love for the Lord Jesus Christ must be set aside. God will brook no competition. I am the Lord God. There is none else. Nobody else has saved you. I have saved you. Why then would you go and trust in something else or someone else? Why would you let anything else or anyone else get in the way of your love and devotion to me? So it's preeminent. I want to be with the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to spend time in his word. That's very important to spend time in his word, to spend time with God's people in worship. It's crucial to your spiritual life to identify with Christ's people and to long to be with them, to make the Lord's day a day of anticipation, to make our prayer times on Wednesday night to be times of anticipation because you all have needs and you need to pray with others and have others pray for you for the things that we need as a congregation as well as individually. There should be anticipation because there's sweetness in that place of prayer. There's sweetness. You know, have you ever just sung a hymn at home? I hope you do. A hymn just springs to mind, you start singing, and you just remember how much nicer it is to sing it with everyone, to sing it with others who know and understand and can relate to those words. It's their life experience. It's their desire to honor the Lord Jesus Christ because we love him. It's all of our worship. draws out of a love for the Lord Jesus Christ, to see Him exalted, to see Him lifted up and glorified. And that always happens at the expense of you, beloved. It always happens at personal expense. It's always costly to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. It's always costly to love the Lord Jesus Christ. And these are days in which that cost seems to be more and more accented in our day. So beloved, flee from idolatry, which covetousness, which is idolatry. They're very connected. And so even in the face of others who don't quite understand your love for the Lord Jesus, he died for me. He died for me. I love and adore him. So is your love for the Lord Jesus Christ growing? Is it stronger day by day? Is it consistent with your love for his revealed will? Those two go hand in hand, his love for his church, he loves his church, he loves his word, he loves his people. Everything that you do out of love for the Lord Jesus Christ, you believe, beloved, that he will bless that, that he will use it in some way that you might not even ever imagine. Let us love the Lord Jesus Christ with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, let us pray. Our gracious Father, we confess unto Thee that our love for Christ is not nearly what Mary's was when she anointed Him with this costly ointment. Lord, teach us to love Thee. Teach us to lay aside. all of the things that are distractions to us. Lord, we pray that we may open our Bibles to learn how to love Thee as we read Thy word. Thou open our hearts as we sing the praises of the Lord Jesus Christ in this place week by week. We pray, Lord, that we may be thrilled with the finished work of the Lord Jesus, that we may adore Him and sit at His feet and learn His ways. We pray, Lord, that Thou wouldst be pleased to deliver us from every barrier, that we may be wholly devoted unto Thee. We thank Thee for the precious love of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives us that desire. and which has shown us that love and produces also by thy spirit that love. May we have more of it by thy mercy towards us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.