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Lord, we come before you now.
We thank you. First of all, that you love us
so much. That you would have your word written down that we
might read it and hear it and study it. Lord, help us to be
hearers, but not only hearers of your word, but doers of your
word. Please bless this reading of your word and its application
to our hearts so that we might know you. And love you. and serve You. We ask this, Lord,
in Jesus' name, Amen. Will you please stand as we read
together God's Holy Word? The section we're going to mainly
focus on this morning is going to be verses 3-9, but I'm going
to read all the way through because this whole section does fit together,
but we're going to focus on the anointing of Jesus at Bethany.
It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened
Bread, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking
how to arrest him, that is, Jesus, by stealth and kill him. For
they said, Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from
the people. And while he was at Bethany in
the house of Simon the leper, As he was reclining at table,
a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard,
very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it out over
his head. There were some who said to themselves
indignantly, why was this ointment wasted like that? For this ointment
could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to
the poor. And they scolded her. But Jesus
said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has
done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor
with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them, but
you will not always have me. She has done what she could.
She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say
to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world,
what she has done will be told in memory of her. The grass withers
and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Amen. Please be seated. If you were to read through the
Gospel of Mark, you would find out that what we have here is
really, we're coming to a culmination of a conflict that's been ongoing
throughout the Gospel of Mark, and indeed we see it in all the
Gospels, between the high priests, the scribes, the leaders of the
elders, the leaders of the people, and Jesus. There is this growing
conflict, and Mark is bringing us now in chapter 14 to see that,
that this conflict has not gone away, it is not abated. it has
intensified. And so part of what we see as
we get into the gospel of Mark as you come towards the end is
this intensification of the Jewish leaders. desire to get rid of
Jesus. As a blasphemer and a troublemaker,
they want to be rid of Him. And so they are seeking to find
that. Now the interesting thing as we come to this is that right
smack dab in the middle of this section, Mark lays out for us
the reason why Judas, at least at the end of the day, says,
that's it. That breaks the camel's back. That's the last straw. this event of this woman walking
in and dumping this bottle. Literally, the text, I don't
know that English can ever really do it. We'd have to spend almost
multiple verses to try and get it out, so I'm going to try and
tell you. Basically, this woman comes in and just douses Jesus. He is soaking wet with this ointment. She pours it on his head, but
it runs, I mean, it saturates him. And the Greek basically
gives us this idea that he was completely saturated. So you
can imagine what that room would have smelled like. A bunch of
men, and all of a sudden, this perfume. I mean, this beautiful,
costly perfume poured out all over Jesus. So you can imagine
how Judas thinks and looks and says, this guy just didn't get
it. And so he basically goes to the other side. and gives
the Jewish leaders what they've been looking for, a way to quiet
and privately deal with Jesus. But in the middle of all this,
what we need to be careful of is this, that we don't miss what Jesus observes. Jesus says
what this woman did was a beautiful thing. It strikes him so powerfully,
you see what he says, wherever the gospel is preached, this
woman will be remembered. Now I think when our Lord and
Savior says that somebody's act is worth remembering, besides
directly related to himself, we ought to take notice of that
and we ought to ask why. Why is this such a profound event? What did this woman do that was
so significant, so amazing. The other thing I wanted you
to note is that if you ever read, you'll find that, and if you've
read through the Gospels, you'll see that Luke has an event like
this, but it happens much earlier in the life of Jesus. And John
actually says that a little bit earlier in the week, if you will,
that Mary The sister of Martha and the sister of Lazarus had
walked in and broken a bottle of perfume over Jesus as well.
I'm persuaded, because I believe the Scripture to be true and
I don't think the Gospel writers were confused, that there may
in fact have been three different episodes where Jesus was doused
with expensive costly perfume. And if that is the case, if there's
actually three different times that this happens, and two of
them in close proximity together, John's, and this anonymous woman
here in Mark, you can imagine the amazement that these disciples
have not yet got it. That the people around Jesus
have not gotten it yet. They really don't understand
who's reclining at the table with them. They're missing the
point. So that's what I want us to do is begin to unpack this,
begin to look at this, begin to see that what we really see
here is a clear understanding that Jesus is going to bring
to us about where we are in redemptive history when we read the Gospels.
That there is a significance here which is transforming of
life and the world we live in. And we need to take note of that.
The main theme I want us to see this morning as we consider this
is true worship is a rash, extravagant, beautiful expression of love. Now, you may say, wait a minute,
Dennis. Worship is not rash. Well, it is in comparison to
the way most of us tend to maybe approach worship, and it is in
comparison to certainly how the world may view someone who is
desirous to love Jesus well. It seems rash. It seems extravagant. It seems a little bit over the
top. So let us begin to look at this.
The first thing I want us to consider is the beautiful thing. What
in fact does happen here? It's interesting because they're
all reclining around this table, and for those of you that don't
know, the typical way to eat was there'd be a table that was
rather low-lying. You'd have a couch. The couch
is pulled out like this. Your feet would be back away
from the food, and you'd be sitting on one elbow and using your other
hand to eat. So they were reclining at the
table eating. And the thing I want you to notice
is that this man is referred to as Simon the leper. Now part
of the reason why that's important is that Simon was a very common
name. I mean, you've got Simon Peter. I mean, there are so many Simons
running around Judea and Galilee. that there needs to be some kind
of designation of exactly which Simon was this. And he's known
as Simon the leper. Which tells us something about
this man, doesn't it? He's no longer a leper because
he's reclining at the table not saying, unclean, unclean. So
he was a leper, but presently is not. How did he stop being a leper?
It's very possible that he is a leper that has been healed
by Jesus. Now that needs to stand out in
your mind as we watch what happens in this house. Here's a man who
potentially was healed by Jesus, Simon the leper. And so he's
holding this banquet, this eating time with Jesus after Jesus has
ridden into Jerusalem. It's about two days before he
and the disciples will celebrate the Passover. And so we see that
this idea is going on here that they're reclining, they're eating,
and as they're reclining at the table, sure in the midst of conversation,
important things, because when men have conversations, it's
always important things, right? So they're discussing important
things, and this woman intrudes on their party. I want you to think about what
happens here. She's not invited. Nowhere does it say, and the
woman whom they had invited comes in. No, this woman just walks
in to their meal, these men, and she takes this big alabaster
jar and she smacks it open and jumps it on Jesus's head. Now, I don't know how many of
you live in a home where you have access to a lady's perfume. But if you ever want to try this,
and with her permission, squirt a whole bunch of that out really
fast. Just make sure it's not the most
expensive stuff she has. But squirt it out a whole lot
and just imagine what that would be like. I mean, just all this
aroma. Or if you've ever walked through
one of the department stores through the perfume area and
there have been a lot of people, especially during Christmas time
where they're constantly spraying things all around, you just have
this huge aroma of smell. And most of it in general smells
pretty good. So you should imagine what this would have been like
if this room, probably not that big, was just engulfed And here's
Jesus sitting there. I mean, this is Jesus, right?
I mean, this is Jesus, the Savior of the world. This is God's Son,
and you just walked in and hosed Him down with expensive nard. See, I want you to get the contrast
that's going on here. This woman walks in. We're sitting
here having a nice meal. She smacks open this huge alabaster
jar, dumps it all over Jesus, What in the world is this woman
doing? Do you get the picture? Do you
see what's happening? So this woman dumps out this
jar. And one of the things I want
you to note, because some people will say, well, the reason why
she breaks it open is because that's the only way to get it
open. That's the only way you could have opened it. Well, here's
the question. I think Gundry is right when he asked this question.
They had to have gotten the stuff into the jar some way. How did
they get it into the jar? There must have been an opening
that they allowed it to put in. So I think, really, what we need
to see is, she didn't have to break the jar open. That's almost
a rash act of just whoosh, whoosh. Rather than taking the ointment
off, which probably if you've ever seen a really expensive
bottle of perfume, lots of times they'll have a jar thing and
you can literally take it out and it'll have a little bit on
the tip and you kind of put it on both sides. The lady will
put it on both sides here and maybe dab her wrist and rub it
together. That's most likely what this
jar was like. And she broke it open. and spilled it out all
over Jesus. All over Him. So what I want us to see then
is the reality of this woman's extravagance, her almost rash
behavior in doing what she did. Another thing I want you to note
is that probably most people believe that something like this,
an expensive bottle of nard, because of its expense and because
of its use in this way, most likely this is something that
had been passed down in the family. This was almost like an inheritance.
And she was supposed to hang on to this for bad times. So in some sense, what we see
this woman doing is not only being rash and extravagant, but
she also basically takes her investments, her portfolio, and
she dumps it out all over Jesus. Do you get the picture of what's
going on here? She takes everything that in this life would give
her surety and security and says, it's worth dumping all over and
all out on Jesus. Are you getting the picture of
what this woman does? The chief priests, the scribes,
and the elders want to kill this man And this woman walks in and
dumps out her life savings all over the top of this man. See
the contrast. You see what's happening here. She displays a willingness to
let the love of Jesus be the driving force of her worship.
She comes in and worships him. Her main focus here is Jesus
and her desire to honor Him. She is not concerned about who's
there. She is not concerned about being excessive. She wants to
show Jesus how much she loves Him. And that's exactly what
she does. This woman also needs to be seen
as an act of her awareness of Jesus' love for her. She does
not do this because she's trying to gain something from Jesus. Rather, what we see here is that
most likely Jesus had done something, healed this woman, helped this
woman. She had seen what He had done for others. And she was
filled with love for Christ. And so she comes. And she pours
out this costly bottle. This is not an act to gain Jesus'
love or approval, but rather giving out to Jesus from what
she had already received from Him, and that is His love. And
we'll see in a few moments that He does, in fact, love her. The
second thing I want us to look at then is the rebuke of the
beautiful thing. The text now tells us that some were there
who became indignant towards what this woman had done. Matthew's
Gospel of this account tells us, in fact, that it was even
some of the disciples became indignant. Now that Greek word
which is translated indignant means to snort. It's like a bull. What's that woman doing? It's
really what they would have done. Snorted. What a waste. Do you know how
much a bottle like that would have cost? That's a man's earnings
for a year. And he just dumped it out. And besides that, don't you know
what time of year it is? It's the special time of year
when we especially remember the poor. That's part of the significance
here. When these men bring up this
act at Passover especially, people took note of Deuteronomy 15 which
said you were supposed to give with a generous heart. Isn't
it ironic though that these men are mad at her because she gave
extravagantly to Jesus who was poor. Jesus didn't even own anything.
He didn't even have a pillow. He laid his head down on a rock
or in some home that someone else owned. He had nothing. And the very heart of Deuteronomy
15 was to love the poor out of a generous heart. And one of
the main statements in Deuteronomy 15, if you go to that section
and read it, was that the poor you will always have with you. They will always be in the land.
And you can do good to them any time you want. And the real thing
I want you to notice is, and I don't want to drive this too
hard, but I do want us to at least notice this a little bit,
is that isn't it oftentimes when someone does something like what
this woman did, they just love Jesus. They're just excited to
know Him and His forgiveness that people always want to bring
up, yeah, but what about? And the poor. One of my favorite questions
to ask those people is, well, how much time do you spend caring
for the poor? And oftentimes the answer is,
not much. See, I think the spirit in some
ways that we see here is the fact that the real spirit of
Deuteronomy 15 is a generous, giving, caring, extravagant heart. And this woman displays it. And
these men don't. And we've seen this throughout
the Gospels, haven't we? Jesus doesn't have time to be
bothered by those kids. Get those kids back. Jesus is important.
He's got important business. Of such is these, these little
children. These are what the children of
God are like. You must come as little children.
Look at all these men giving all these great sums, but here's
this woman who gives two mites and she gave more than all the
rest. Jesus, your economics is really screwed up. You don't
understand economics at all. How can a woman who gives two
mites, two mites won't do anything for the temple? Do you know how
much it costs for that oil to burn and for these bricks to
be maintained and for The bread to be put? I mean, two mites?
Don't you get it? Do you see? Maybe we even can hear
somewhere in the background, Martha, Martha, you are worried
about so many things, but only one thing is needful. Mary has
made the better choice. See, in some ways what we see
these men really doing is saying to this woman, this anonymous
woman, you are wasting money on Jesus and you could have given
it to the poor. Now, what I don't want to say
or suggest to you at all, and please do not hear me, is that
we shouldn't care for the poor. Rather, what I'm really saying
is, if we understand what's happening in this passage, we will want
to care for the poor. We will get what Jesus says when
He says, when you give to the least of these, My brothers,
you've given it to Me. See, you can't get that passage
if you don't get this woman. If you don't really understand
her and what she's really doing. You will miss the whole point.
You will do a bunch of stuff, but will miss the whole point
of doing it. And then we see Judas. Judas just says, you know what?
Jesus doesn't get it. He doesn't understand how power
works. He doesn't understand how money works. And he keeps
driving away the people. And now we could have had this
woman, if he just stuck his hands up and grabbed the nard before
she broke it open, I mean, we could have had a serious take. And of course, that'd have been
nice for Judas since we're told in other parts of the gospel,
he tended to pilfer a little bit, you know, a little bit for
the 11 and a little bit for me, a little bit for the 11 and a
little bit for me. Jesus doesn't care about it anyway. We see here that Judas finally
just says he doesn't see it, he doesn't get it. And so he
goes, we see in those last verses, to give these men an opportunity
to take Jesus without the crowd seeing it. What these men express is a position
held by many inside and outside of the church, which is that
costly loving of Jesus is just not practical. It's not practical. The last thing that I want to
look at here is the praise of the beautiful thing. And I want
us to notice what Jesus does. Jesus defends her and praises
her. Look at what He says there in
verse 6. But Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble
her? She has done a beautiful thing
to me. A beautiful thing to me. And
see, therein lies the significance. It might be impractical if it
had been anybody else but Jesus. But in light of who it was, it
was a very practical thing. Her action was totally directed
to Jesus and He tells them so. Jesus gets right at the heart
of what must motivate all who would do true acts of caring
kindness. They must do it out of love for
Him. Really loving Him. Jesus also defends by His statement
the ability of this woman to appraise the situation correctly.
As I've already said, the poor would always be there. She could
always go and do something with the poor. Jesus would not always
be there. And see, what had Jesus been
telling His disciples? And He'd even used it to defend
them. Remember when the Pharisees got after them about washing
their hands and about, you know, fasting and doing all those kind
of things? And Jesus says, you know, there'll come a day when
My disciples will fast, but while the bridegroom is here, you don't
fast. And see, this dear woman, I don't
know how much she really understood, but she understood enough that
Jesus was a man and he was here for a specific time. She also
understood that he was more than a man and that whatever she had,
it was worth dumping out on him. It was worth giving to him. As I said before, we should not
take this to be a condemning of caring for the poor. Rather,
it is an example of caring for the one who was poor for us. This woman may not have understood
or appreciated fully where she was in redemptive history, but
Jesus did. And that's why his statements
now begin to unfold. Look at what he says. For you
always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can
do good for them, but you will not always have Me. I've been
telling you all along, I'm going to the cross. I'm going to die. And on the third day, I will
rise again. You will not always have Me here." Now whether this
woman really understood all that or not is not important. Jesus
says, what this woman does is anoint Me for burial. He gets
where He is and He takes this example of extravagant love for
himself and says, do you see what your attitude and actions
ought to be towards me? You have me for a brief time. And you're worried about waste
rather than worrying about soaking up and saturating yourself with
me. See, what we're really seeing here
is they really don't understand who they are sitting in the presence
of. Well, you're God. Well, then
what should that look like? See, don't you understand the
Old Testament when it says bring a lamb, a bull, a goat without
spot or blemish? Why? The best of the flock. Why? Because God's worthy of
the best. That's not a waste. That's not
being overly extravagant. In fact, if we really get it,
don't we think, if I only had two bottles to dump all over
Jesus? Jesus' response here in the face
of the dereliction of the cross and the horror of death in the
grave is striking. Think about this. He knows Gethsemane
is coming. He knows the hour of dereliction
awaits. He knows the grave and death
will be His. He knows it's coming. And yet
He praises this woman's act and her appraisal. And in doing so,
what He tells us is also He gives us, even right before He heads
the cross, I want you to see that He gives a taste of hope. Wherever the gospel about me
is told, this woman will be remembered. I want you to think about how
striking this is. Realize where we are. Jesus is
two days from the Passover meal, three days from the cross, and
He's already saying in His language, men, it's going to be bad, but
there's hope. There is a resurrection and there
is an ascension coming and Jesus knows it. And He knows that not
only are all these events around Him going to take place, but
that because of that, His gospel is going to be told. It's not
just the fact of what is going to happen with Him. It's the
reality that He says wherever this good news is told, which
means it's not going to stop here. Do you see the message
of hope here in the middle of this place where we are seeing
Christ head to the cross? Where most of the unsaved world
sits and says, Jesus' ministry ended at Calvary. Jesus says,
no, it did not. It really just began. And in some small way, this woman
gets it. When the men I've spent three
years teaching don't, she gets it. She understands. I'm worth a year's wages dumped
out all over my head. I'm worth it. In conclusion then, I want to
say a few things to us. To be people that have no regrets. And I want you to listen to me.
To be people who have no regrets as a church. There needs to be
nothing that stands in the way of our love for Jesus. And see,
I'm not talking about a nice, sterile, Presbyterian love. I'm
talking about a misty-eyed, overwhelmed, thank you, Jesus, whatever I
have is yours kind of love. And I say that jokingly because
if you read in the earlier movements of the Reformed churches, you
will know that because of their great awareness of the love of
God, missions and mercy abounded. You didn't have to tell people
to go out and help people. You didn't have to tell people to
go out and tell people about Jesus. They loved Him so they
did. They really valued their salvation
more than they valued their reputation, more than they valued their portfolios. They loved Jesus. And see, there's
a real sense in which we really don't understand sometimes what
it really means to love Jesus extravagantly. We really want
to create a practical Jesus. And this is why at times we often
live with regret. If we want to be a church that
says, I have no regrets, I get to the end of my life, no regrets. We need to be people who deeply
and desperately love Jesus. Extravagantly and rashly love
Jesus. I didn't say stupidly. I didn't
say ignorantly. I said we should love Him extravagantly
and to the world and maybe even to other people in our midst,
it should seem like we're being a bit rash. And if we kind of get that, men
and women, we will see amazing things happen. I don't know that
the world will think they're amazing. I don't know that any
other church in this city will think it's amazing. But if we
really get this, We can see amazing things and we can pray that we
all across this Tucson Valley would love Christ like this.
Because I think that as we do, God uses those things greatly
to accomplish His purposes. So that's the first thing I want
us to think. The other thing I want us to notice is this. That that
has to come out of a deep awareness of how extravagantly and costly
Jesus' love is for us. So you will never love Jesus
until you really understand how much He loves you. You never
get it. You never really love Him until
you really do say, that man was broken in spirit and his blood
and guts poured out, spilled out, broken and spilled out all
over me. See, we don't really understand
love until we really get that. Jesus loves us so much that He
forsook the riches of heaven and the perfect fellowship with
His Father and became a man, a poor man, a despised man, a
rejected man. so that we might know the love
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit. So, how do you view this woman's
act? Is she excessive? Is she irresponsible? Is she foolish? Do you find her,
or even more importantly, Jesus' acts rash and impractical? Do you find Jesus' appraisal
and value of this particular situation a bit excessive? A
bit over the top? Are we so concerned about doing
the right thing that we lose sight of the One for whom we
ought to be doing it? We're so concerned about are
we doing the right thing that we miss the right One? How, men and women, are we worshiping
Jesus? That's fundamentally what we
need to see out of this passage. Is it? Is the heart of our worship
a beautiful thing? May God make it so in our midst.
Amen.
A Beautiful Thing
| Sermon ID | 927232256163683 |
| Duration | 34:13 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Mark 14:1-11 |
| Language | English |
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