I appreciate that. Let me get my microphone turned on here. I think we're good. Got a light on, everything else. Well, thank you for coming back this evening. And I appreciate that. And even though you knew who was preaching and you still came back, so that's a blessing. And I hope that you are, man, focused in, like we talked about this morning. And everything, I sure do love this church and love you people. And man, I love the Dignans down here, even though they got a couple not-headed sons, I sure do appreciate them and love them and everything. And so that's probably to be said about my parents as well. for the two wise guys. That was pretty good, Brother Jake. Yeah, it was good. So I do like that. And I tell you what, we can definitely dish it out, but I enjoy taking it too. It doesn't bother me a bit. And so, man, I'm telling you what, I just love to have a good time. If you can't joke with one another and have a good time, I guarantee you one thing. The disciples, can you imagine what a prankster old Peter was? I mean, you just think about it. Can you imagine what that guy did to the other disciples? He probably tormented the fire out of them the whole time and everything. So, you know, I think they had a good time in the Lord and walking with the Lord, and we can do the same thing at church. We sure can. John chapter number 12. Do y'all have my timer up there? Okay, all right. They had a timer up there earlier and everything, so I think they were trying to hint at me. and everything. So John chapter number 12, I am gonna be quick this evening and try to get y'all out. But I do wanna be able to come together and look at the word of God and give you a truth from the Bible that hopefully will help you. And I told Brother Jake, I said, I don't have any notes tonight, so that could be either real good, could be real short, or it could be real bad, it could be real long. I don't know which one it's gonna be, but we'll find out in just a minute. Maybe 5, 10 minutes or maybe 45 minutes, I don't know. So John 12, verse number 1, the Bible says, And Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. And there they made him a supper, and Martha served. But Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. And then Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, And he anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. And then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor? And this he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief. And he had the bag and he bare what was put therein. And then Jesus said, Then said Jesus, I'm sorry, let her alone. Against the day of my bearing, hath she kept this. I love this passage of scripture, and I love this story. I've preached from it many, many times. And tonight, I'm just gonna give you some simple thoughts, just some simple things that I have just thought about in just the last few weeks from this passage. Isn't it amazing? You know, you read a book, and you can ponder on it a little bit, but you read the Bible, and every time you go back to it, you get something fresh and new. And that's the kind of God we serve, and I'm so thankful. Let's pray, God. I pray you help us tonight. Lord, I pray that your word would not return to void. I know that it won't, and so, God, I pray that tonight you would just help us as we discuss, we preach on this topic of worship. What a time of year to worship a savior. to worship the Savior, not a Savior, but he's the one and the only one. And God, I pray you'd help us to focus in, as we talked about this morning, and Lord, just look at what worship really is. We love you, Jesus, in your name I pray, amen. Here is this lady, and Mary, she loves Jesus. She loves Jesus. That's the key. to the entire message tonight is that Mary loved Jesus. Jesus had done so much for her. It was hard not to love him. She just fell in love with this man who had literally saved her family's life. I mean, here we're talking about Lazarus, and the Bible says, whom was dead and Jesus raised from the dead. Don't you remember the story? The Bible says that he stank. He didn't smell very good. His body began to decay and to rot. And Jesus came in the down, and he raised him from the dead. And it changed his life, or he changed that family's life forever. Mary loved Jesus. Mary loved Jesus. She didn't struggle with an embarrassment of what the other disciples thought. In fact, here's Judas, and he was probably saying what everybody else was thinking, was, man, that's a lot of money. When she poured out that box of sphagnum, that costly ointment, that was a lot of money that would flow across the feet of Jesus and onto the ground. And then the Bible says that she took her hair, and she wiped his feet, and she worshiped Jesus. And all the disciples were looking around, and they were saying, what a waste. And Jesus said, that is so precious to me that I'm gonna put it in my word, and this will be remembered for all eternity. That's precious in the eyes of God. See, Mary loved her Savior, and because she did, she wasn't embarrassed to worship her Savior, and she didn't care who was looking around. The Bible says that perfect love casteth out all fear. My dad tells a story about whenever I was younger and I was in high school and stuff I rode a few bulls, well actually I didn't ride many bulls but I got on a few bulls there for a little while and everything and when I did one time my dad came and watched him and I'd gotten bucked off which was pretty normal and so anyhow I'd gotten bucked off and my hand was stuck in the rig and I couldn't get loose and I remember my dad you know you're looking at him and you watch him walk and you think man he can't do a whole lot But he was ready to crawl over. He was stepping up about to crawl over in there with the bull. Why? Because he loved his son. And you look around and you say, that's foolishness. No, it wasn't. It was love. He didn't care what had happened to him. He didn't care what was going to happen to him because he loved who was in that arena. And you know, that is the problem, is that we are more concerned about what people around us think of us than we are about the one who matters and what he thinks of us. I was talking to a man not too long ago, and he had a little difference of opinion with a few things with me, and we were just kind of hashing it out. I confronted him on a few issues and everything, and when I did, and I just looked at him, and he had mentioned a couple things, and I said, sir, I said, I'm not really gonna try to be mean, but I said, sir, I don't live my life to worry about what you think or your preacher thinks or anybody else. I try my best to live my life according to what Jesus thinks. You know, it aggravated him a little bit, but I'll tell you, if I'm running around trying to please people, I'm not worshiping Christ like I should be. And this woman cared nothing about the opinion of man. She cared only about the opinion of her Savior, and she pleased him. You know, I like to please the one I love. I love my wife. I like to please her. I like to do things for her and try to help her out and buy her stuff or this or that. I try to because I love her. But many times we don't worry. We're not worried about pleasing Christ. The one who loves us more than our wife or husband or anybody else ever could. And I believe that's why we struggle with worship in our homes. You say, we worship at church? No, you can worship God. Look right here. The man, Christ, was sitting at the table. And he was eating a meal. And he was with his friends. And nobody cared. She didn't care what anybody thought. She went ahead right there. What it's saying is you can worship Christ at the dinner table. You can worship Christ at work. You can worship Christ in your denture. You ought to worship Christ when you're at church. And whenever we're singing the songs of Zion, What I'm saying is we got to get back to an old-fashioned way of worshiping God, because He cares about it. He cares about it. I love it. She took what was valuable, but she had to make time in order to do so. She had to make time in order to do so. Here they are. She and Martha, they're cooking, preparing a meal. All the stuff, when you have guests over to the house, you know how it is, it's crazy and everything. I say this all the time, but women want the house to look like nobody lives there when company comes over. You know what I'm talking about, men? I feel like that's a little pharisaical, if you ask me. I mean, there ought to be a little bit of dirt on the floor. That's the way it is usually. And there ought to be at least one or two pairs of shoes laying out in the doorway where the kids just kick them off when they walk in, or the husband, either one. And they just leave them there. I think that's the way it is. I don't want to be a Pharisee, so I'd just rather leave it like it is. But you know how women are. So anyhow, I think I just killed half the crowd there. So men, we'll just go on and worship together this evening, OK? Sound good? But here they are, they are busy, busy, busy, busy. It's Mary Martha. And here she is. I just imagine at some point or another, it just hits her. If I'm gonna worship Christ. See, the Bible says she kept this unto my bearing, and we'll not get into it entirely, I think that she understood at that moment in time that she knew that Christ, he'd already prophesied of it. He'd already talked about it, that he was going to die. And I believe that what the Bible is teaching there is that she knew when all the other disciples, they didn't figure it out. They didn't understand, but she knew what nobody else really hardly caught on to. And that was this, that Christ was going to die for our sins. And she anointed the body of Christ, but here she takes time at one of the busiest times. and she worships her Lord and Savior. That's the message tonight in a nutshell is this, is let's take time in the busiest of times. If you don't have enough time to worship God each and every day, then you will never, ever You will never ever have enough time. You say, what do you mean? I know this. God doesn't put more hours in the day, but God makes your hours more fruitful when you set aside time for him. He does. God just blesses. God's not gonna give you 25 hours, but the 24 that you got, he's gonna make them a lot better if you set aside some time to worship him. I'm not going to get into all of what worship is necessarily about, but I can tell you this, for this lady to do this, there was not one ounce of pride in her life. Not one ounce. In fact, it was just a little bit embarrassing, probably, maybe even Lazarus probably sat there and thought, Mary, what are you doing in front of all these people? There's not one ounce of pride. Not one ounce of pride. That's the one thing, that's one of the things the Lord really, really hates, is pride. And that's one thing that, you know what, all of us really, really have to work on. But if we wanna worship Christ like we should, if we wanna do what is pleasing to Him, we gotta get rid of the pride. There was not one ounce of pride. There was not one ounce of worry of what others thought. There wasn't one ounce of a matter of man's opinion on her life. She simply wanted to please her Lord and Savior. And the challenge tonight is this, is that the busiest of times, family's coming and going, you're fixing a big old meal, the men are cooking the big old meal for Christmas and all that stuff. That's not happening, but at least it's gonna be better for everybody else if it doesn't happen. But all the stuff that goes into it, why don't you take time with your family? just at some point on the day that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and just worship Him in the busiest of times. Take all the wrapping paper. Speaking of wrapping paper, man, I'm telling you what, I just love Brother Randy to death. He is the man and so we left him a nice wrapped up present down in his office and everything. You know, take all the wrapping paper, set it aside. Why don't you sit down with your family at some point during that day and spend some time and just do what pleases the Lord. Do what pleases the Lord. I think of all the days, we ought to do it every day, but of all the days, that'd be a good one, just to worship our Savior. Old Mary, she pleased the Lord. She didn't please Judas. She didn't please Thomas. She probably didn't even please Lazarus. But you know what she said? I'm not worried about them. I'm worried about Jesus. And you know, that's what if we could ever get to that place. Son, I'm telling you, the Lord would use us. God would use us to reach people, reach the lost. It would be absolutely amazing if we could get to the place where we're more worried about him. instead of any of them. So this Christmas, this Christmas, just a couple days away, let's take some time to worship our Savior. Heavenly Father, I ask you this evening, Lord, I know, simple thought, wasn't alliterated, wasn't noted out, it wasn't anything that was special as far as the preaching, as far as delivery, any of that, but it is so special, so special to you. And God, I just pray that you would use this to challenge your people, Lord, just to worship you because they love you, to worship you because they love you. Lord, I want to know you more. I want to love you more. God, I can't do that unless I speak with you, unless I talk to you, unless I worship you for who you really are. I sure do love you, Jesus. I love this church. I love these people. God, I pray that you'd help them. I pray you'd give them a tremendous, tremendous Christmas and tremendous New Year. That God's souls will be reached and lives will be changed because of these folks that sit right here. Bless us now. Bless this invitation. In your name I pray. Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. Did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters? Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new? His child that you've delivered will soon deliver you. your baby boy would give sight to a blind man Mary did you know your baby boy would calm the storm with his hand did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trot when you kiss your little ♪ You've kissed the face of God ♪ ♪ The blind will see, the deaf will hear ♪ ♪ The dead will live again ♪ ♪ The lame will leap, the dumb will speak ♪ ♪ The praises of the Lamb ♪ ♪ Mary, did you know ♪ Your baby boy is Lord of all creation. Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nation? Know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb This sleeping child you're holding is the great I Am