John chapter 12, six days before
the Passover. Jesus arrived at Bethany where
Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a
dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served while Lazarus was
among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of
pure nard, expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus' feet
and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with
the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas
Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected to Why wasn't this
perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's
wages. He did not say this because he
cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he
used to help himself to what was put into it. Leave her alone,
Jesus replied. It was intended that she should
save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always
have the poor among you, but you will not always have me." Brother Frank Hall, you all remember
him. He and I, we talked on the phone
for over two hours the other day, but we talked for a while
about this scripture. And I told him, I said, Frank,
I think I'm gonna preach on that this Sunday. And I guess my prediction's
coming true. This story is told to us by three
of the four gospel writers. You can find this story in Matthew,
Mark, and John. Now Luke has a very similar story,
in chapter 7 of Luke, but there are sufficient differences in
that story that we are led to conclude that it's a separate
event. Another time in which a woman
anointed the Lord with expensive perfume and wiped his feet with
her hair. In that story, it points out
that it was a notably sinful woman, that is, a woman that
in that town was known for her sinful life. And in that particular
story, yes, he was in the house of one named Simon, but it wasn't
Simon the leper, it was Simon the Pharisee. And in that story,
our Lord's rebuke involved Simon the Pharisee's self-righteous
thoughts. He never spoke them. Now the
problems here were spoken out loud. The bad attitudes in this
story that we're going to look at this morning here were spoken
out loud. In Luke's account of a woman anointing the Lord's
feet with oil, or with perfume, it's just something that Simon
was thinking. And what he was thinking was,
well, if this man were really a prophet, he would know that
this was a notably sinful woman, and he would not let her touch
him. So it's a different lesson, a
different Simon, a different time, a different woman. The
only thing similar was that there was an extravagant amount of
costly ointment put upon the Lord, and the woman
who did so washed his feet with her hair. But in Matthew, Mark,
and in John, we have the same story at the same time, same
people involved, Each one of them does have some details about
the story that might not be found in others. So let me kind of
give you an account of what happened here, including all the details
that we can find from these separate accounts. Six days before the
Passover, the Lord arrived in this town called Bethany, which
I think was like about two miles outside of Jerusalem, not very
far away at all. In fact, we get the impression
that when the Lord would go to Jerusalem, He would stay in Bethany
because that's where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived. And this is
the Passover during which our Lord, or the celebration time
of the Passover, in which our Lord would be crucified. Now,
sometime between this six days before the Passover and two days
before the Passover, we don't know exactly when, but somewhere
between those two dates, they gave a dinner Simon the leper
they called him because he was Simon and he had some kind of
skin disease. Simon the leper gave a dinner
in honor of the Lord Jesus Christ and even though it was Simon's
house it was Martha remember Martha, Mary, and Lazarus it
was Martha that served And you know, we shouldn't be surprised.
Bethany wasn't a very big town. A little small, just a little
bedroom community off of Jerusalem. And do you remember one of the
more notable stories about Martha, Mary, and Lazarus when the Lord
was at their house one day teaching? And the normal pattern would
be that the teacher would teach and the men would crowd around
him and listen. And the women would stay separate. They had things to do. And Martha
was real busy, it says, busying herself, preparing food, getting
everything ready. You know, and that kind of thing
needs to be done. I mean, there's stuff that has to be done, but
she was really occupied with it. And what did Mary do? You
know, Mary was always doing what people thought shouldn't be done,
but what the Lord thought was the best thing to do. And Mary
thought to herself, I am not going to waste my time putting
together a fancy meal that everybody's going to forget. I'm going to
go in and listen to the master and hear words never to be forgotten. And so she snuck in that room
where all the men were. And Martha's all busy, and finally
she says, Lord, I am working myself to the bone, I'm working
my fingers to the bone, and Mary's just sitting there. Why don't
you tell her to help me? And the Lord said, Martha, Martha,
you're busy about many things. Mary has chosen the better thing
and it will not be taken from her. Now the Lord was not rebuking
Martha. For being busy with some things
that need attended to. He rebuked Martha for thinking
there was something wrong with Mary because she chose something
better. And so here we got another dinner
being held in honor of the Lord. It's not even in Martha, Mary,
and Lazarus' house. But who's the one putting it
together? Who's the one doing the cooking? Who's the one setting
the table and all that? It's Martha. You know, brethren, Martha is
going to remain forever Martha. That is, for a lifetime, Martha. Mary is going to be Mary. Lazarus
is going to be Lazarus. All of us have holes, shall we
say, in our character that need to be changed. Martha had hers,
Mary had hers, Lazarus had his, all that. We all have our weak
spots. And though we grow in grace, we're going to still have these
weak spots. Maybe they won't be as weak as
they were at one time, but they're still going to be there. Martha's
still doing what she always did. And I'm sure that the people
there were glad that she did it, because they were going to
get hungry, and she was going to have food ready. During the meal, though, Martha's
busy, Lazarus is listening, the Lord is teaching, as usual. In
comes Mary. As usual, out of place. Her culture would have said,
you belong in the kitchen with Martha. But she comes in, and
it's safe to assume that this is the Mary who is sister to
Martha and Lazarus, because here in John it just says Mary, and
anybody would have expected that was the Mary associated with
Martha and Lazarus. Mary comes in the room, and she's
got an alabaster box that'll hold about a pint. Actually,
I think the original language says a pound, but that would
translate roughly in volume to about a pint. Alabaster box,
nice box. It's the kind of thing, if you
put something in it, you poured it out. You know, when it was
used up, you saved that nice box so you could put something
else in it. But she came in with this alabaster box, and in this
box was a pint of pure nard, some call it spikenard, but it
was a spicy perfume that a common man would have had to work an
entire year to buy that much. It says here about a year's wages,
and in our translation it says the same thing in the other places.
Technically what it says is 300 denarii. And the average or the
common laborer of that day could make about one denarius a day. And so 300 of those days, you
know, that's about how many days a year you work. It would have
taken a man a year devoting all common labor to taking him an
entire year of working to make enough money to buy that pint
of spices. Give you an idea. And I'm glad
that our translation says a year's wages because we can relate to
that. We have no idea what a denarius is. It was a Roman coin, by the
way. And I would say that the average common laborer today
probably makes about $30,000 a year. Can you imagine somebody using
up $30,000 worth of perfume in one use on one person on one
day? That's what Mary did. But that's
not all. It doesn't say she opened up
this box like there was a cork in the top of it or something
and she poured it out. It says she broke the box. You know, this box was a wonderful
thing in and of itself. But Mary did not think it so
wonderful that she wouldn't break it to pieces to make sure all
the ointment comes out, all the perfume comes out, and all of
it is laid upon the Savior. Now it says here in John that
she poured it on his feet. Matthew and Mark says she poured
it on his head. Now why would there be a difference in scriptures?
Well, one reason is this. God inspired his scriptures to
be written in such a way that if anybody in rebellion doesn't
want to believe it, they can find things in there to justify
their unbelief. And they'll find things like
this, and they won't think for a minute to consider how maybe
both could be true. They'll just say, I'm not going
to believe the Bible. Matthew said this woman poured it on
his head, and then John says poured it on his foot. If the
Bible can't even get things like that right, why should I believe
it about anything else? You know, God will give enough
rope to the rebel to hang himself with. The Bible says he will
send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie.
If people want to believe the lie, there are enough things
in scriptures which they're not deceptive, they're not wrong,
but someone who doesn't care enough to look or think about
it will say, can't trust this book. You know, it's going to
have silly little errors like that in it. How can it be she
poured it on his head and on his foot? Why would Matthew and
Mark say head and John say foot? Well, the bigger question is,
why would John say foot? And here's why I think he would.
Anybody knows that to anoint someone, you start at the head.
And normally, if they were going to anoint someone, they used
a little bit of oil and they poured it on their head and rubbed
it in, and it was comforting. It might be nothing other than
olive oil or something like that, but in those days, of course,
we wash our hair, we try to get all the oil out of it. They were
in that dry area, you know, and they were trying to put oil back
in. And if it was some kind of fragrant oil like this, you know,
it was an honor, just a few drops, just a little bit on the head,
and they'd rub that in, and it'd smell pretty, and the head would
feel better and all that. To Mary, that wasn't enough.
She broke that box so that every last drop would come out and
she poured it on the Lord from head to toe. From the top of his head to the
bottom of his feet. And she was not satisfied to
take out a towel and rub his feet with it. Maybe to get up
any excess or whatever, you know, so it wouldn't be slippery, whatever.
No, she took down her hair, and with her hair, she wiped his
feet, and massaged that oil in, and comforted his feet. And when she did this, Matthew and Mark tell us, excuse
me, John tells us it was only Judas mentions only Judas, but Matthew
and Mark says some of the other disciples got involved in this,
but evidently it started with Judas. He looked at that and he said, what a waste. What
a waste. This could have been sold for
a year's wages and the money given to the poor And Matthew
and Mark says the other disciples got in on this. And let's learn
a lesson from this right away. Bad communication, if that's
the way to put it. Negative talk is infectious. Be careful what you say. Because
what you say, someone else hears. And they pick it up and pass
it on. And before long, Here, Judas, a godless man, we later
find out, he has infected even the disciples of the Lord Jesus
Christ to look upon Mary with disdain. Here is their Lord and Master
being treated with such great honor, and they don't see that. By the mouth of Judas, they've
all been brought into this negative attitude. What a waste! And here's
what I want to get to. I'm just going to jump to it
right now. We'll get to it in more detail later. Let me tell you this.
You can't waste anything on the Lord Jesus Christ. Did you hear
that? You can't waste anything on the
Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing can be spent on honoring
Him and glorifying Him and worshiping Him that in the end will have
proven to have been a waste of resources. Can't be done. He is worthy. From the Father's
viewpoint, He is worthy of the whole universe. What's a box of ointment? compared
to the universe but they all got wrapped up in this what a
waste what a waste but of course Judas really didn't care about
the poor the other disciples didn't understand this about
Judas he didn't care about the poor he cared about himself and
he was the treasure and he was a thief And he regularly took
money out of the treasury for himself, and what he saw was,
putting it in modern terms, $30,000 just went down the drain that
might have gone in the bag, and he could have been helping himself
to it. So our Lord responded. And I
love it to hear our Lord come to the defense of one of His
people. And He will. He responded, leave
her alone. Leave her alone. You know, our
Lord didn't speak harshly very often. But one, it seems this
was one of the big things that would get Him to speak harshly
to people. When they in any way cast an
ill light upon the simple worship and devotion of His people, or
if someone were to stand in the way of a sinner seeking mercy
and grace from Him. He spoke harshly to those Pharisees
and says, regarding them, He says, they lock up, they lock
up the way of life, they won't go in, they won't let anybody
else go in either. And he said to Judas, and even
to these of the other disciples that got infected by Judas' bitterness,
he said, leave her alone. Just recently we finished going
through the book of Revelation in our midweek services. Second
time I've been through the book of Revelation. I am astounded
at this truth that is taught in that book. That all those
judgments All that wrath. Now religion, most modern religion,
looks to the book of Revelation and says, yeah, that's God just
coming after the world because of their sin, all the, you know,
and of course they pick up whatever's the big sins of the day. All
that abortion, all that homosexuality, and all that this, and all that
that, and then God's going to come and He's going to throw
them all in hell. Do you know why all those judgments
happen according to the book of Revelation? because the world
reached out and touched God's church. It says that regarding
in particular the great prostitute, Babylon the Great, which is a
picture of the world as it tries to seduce God's people away from
the Lord Jesus Christ with all the glories of the world and
all the enamorments of the world and all that tries to seduce
The bride of Christ from Christ. And it says that the Lord Jesus
Christ casts her into the lake of fire. And it says they shouted
hallelujah when the Lord did that. Why? Because the blood
of God's saints was found in her. I was mulling this over this
morning, as I got here early, and I got to thinking, brethren,
and this is, it's almost scary to say, but it's glorious, so
glorious, I've got to say it. The world is tempting, isn't
it? Let's face it, it is. We like it. And much of what
the world has, there's nothing wrong with having it, with enjoying
it. The problem is, the world wants
you to pursue it at the expense of Christ. And it's like, well, we belong
to the Lord, don't we? We are the Lord's bride. We are
his wife. He bought us, he purchased us,
he's married us through the gospel. But here comes the world and
he is trying to seduce, the world is trying to seduce us away from
Christ that we would, for lack of a better way to put it, carry
on an affair with the world. And when it does, Who does Christ
get angry at? Now there's not a one of us that
to some degree has not been unfaithful to our heavenly husband. Is there? We will never suffer wrath for
it. Who will? That one who dared tempt away
the bride of Christ. You know, it's a common thing. A lot of people don't understand
it. But if you got a man and a wife, man loves his wife, but
some other man enters the picture and draws her away into an affair,
who will that husband be mad at? His wife? He'll be disappointed. He'll
be hurt. Who do you think he wants to
shoot? The other man. And when the world sets forth
its temptations to us and we fall to it, who do you think
is going to suffer for it? The wrath. The world will. Our Lord is jealous of his wife.
And he will never visit that jealousy for his wife on his
wife. He'll visit that jealousy on
the world who dared to reach out and take her. And I tell you, when I think
of my unfaithfulness to the Lord, and it's not me, but the world
is going to suffer for it, I think, my, my, my. What kind of Lord
do I have? No wonder it's written, "'Tis
mercy all immense and free, for, O my God, it found out me." And here now, of course, Mary
wasn't being unfaithful. Mary was being faithful at this
point. But somebody from the world spoke ill of her. And our
Lord said, leave her alone. Don't you touch one that I love. He said, leave her alone, why
are you bothering her? And the world always will bother
those that worship the Lord Jesus Christ. She has done a beautiful
thing to me. The world is all wrapped up in
a pursuit, the religious world that is, a pursuit of righteousness. And they got their laws, and
they got their rules, and they're all trying to do it. Do you know
what happened here? Mary didn't say, what's the righteous
thing to do with this perfume? You know what would have been
the righteous thing? Ten percent. That would have done it. A tithe.
And if she had gone there, and instead of breaking that box
of ointment, she just pulled the stopper out of it, and carefully
measured out ten percent of the contents, and poured that on
the Lord Jesus, that would have been a righteous work. That's
not what she did. 100% broken box anointing, and
our Lord said, this ain't righteous, this is beautiful. This is beautiful. You see, the world does not understand
the beauty of worship. The world does not understand
that the Lord Jesus Christ counts as beautiful the love and faith
of His people expressing itself in wholehearted devotion. and
worship. The world doesn't understand
that. The world understands 10%. The world understands giving
the Lord His day. You know, one out of seven. The
world understands, well, yes, give the Lord His place, but
let's not get crazy about it. Mary was crazy about the Lord
Jesus Christ. Crazy enough to spend $30,000
in one act of worship. And our Lord said, that's beautiful.
That's beautiful. He says, the poor you'll always
have with you and you can help them anytime you want. Now, our
Lord knew what Judas was and he knew what was in Judas's heart
and he said, Judas, you're always gonna have the poor with you.
You can go help them just anytime you want. Is that what you're
really concerned about, Judas? You got plenty of time. Really,
Judas didn't, did he? But we got our whole lives to
take care of the poor if that's what's in our heart to do so.
We've got the time. They're always going to be around.
And it won't matter how much helping we do, there's still
always going to be poor people. That's just the nature of this
kind of world. He said, you won't always have me with you. And that was Mary's attitude.
Now she did not realize the Lord would in just a few days be crucified. And then several weeks after
that he was going to go to glory and she would never see him again
until she died. She didn't know that. But she
knew this. He was here on this day. And she says in her heart, today
is the day I've got with him. Today I do have the opportunity
to do this. I'm not going to wait till tomorrow.
Today. 100% broken pretty box, expensive
perfume, devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm sure she's thinking that
if I'm around tomorrow, then we'll think of something else.
But I got today. And today, everything I've got
is His. He says, you'll not always have
me, She did what she could. You know, we get so busy trying
to think of something great and glorious to do for the Lord Jesus
Christ. He does not need us to do anything
great and glorious. And if we're looking for great
and glorious things to do, He's probably never going to allow
us to because the moment we do it, we're going to write that
down. Look what I did. No. She did what she could. She could
not go to the temple and preach. They wouldn't let her. And maybe
she didn't have the capacity to. I don't know. We don't know,
you know, we really don't know anything about Mary except that
she sat at the feet of the Lord to listen and she did this. And
then that business of coming to the Lord about, you know,
why didn't you get here sooner and keep Lazarus from dying. That's all we know about Mary.
Always has to do with her devotion to Christ. What she could do, she did do. Then he goes, it was intended
that she save this perfume and pour it on my body beforehand
to prepare for my burial. Now, Mary didn't know this. I'm sure those words surprised
her as much as did anybody else, because nobody knew. Even though
he told them, nobody knew what was going to happen in a few
days. Mary went in there and she just
did what she could to demonstrate her love and affection for the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord said it was intended, it was
decreed before the world, It was purposed by my father that
she save up this box, this alabaster box full of ointment, and pour
it out on me this day in preparation of my burial. And you know something?
She is the only one that was ever able to prepare the Lord
for burial. Because remember he was crucified
just before a Sabbath day, they barely had time to get him off
of the cross, wrap him up in the cloth real quick, and stick
him in a tomb. And we read that after the Sabbath was over, as
it began to dawn towards the first day of the new week, that
a bunch of women went there to the tomb and they had spices
with them, anointments. They were ready. This was the
first opportunity they had and they were going to go to the
tomb and do for his body what they didn't have the time to
do beforehand. And when they got there, he was
already alive again. They never got a chance to do
it. Just marry. You know, brethren, If we approach
the Lord Jesus Christ with the kind of devotion that Mary did,
not caring about the cost, and I don't mean just the cost in
money, we'll see that here in just a few minutes, but if we
just pursue Him with devotion, we may have no idea what God
intended by all of it. But God will bring honor to Himself through what He moves us to do
in such devotion. And the Lord goes on to say this,
I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout
the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of
her. Now, you and I, Oh, it's so easy
for us to understand why God would have us go out and preach
the gospel to keep alive the memory of the Lord Jesus Christ,
wouldn't we? I mean, that's perfectly reasonable
to us. But once again, we are taken
back by the love and affection of the Lord Jesus Christ for
one of His own. He says, wherever this gospel
is told, This story will be told in memory of her. Our Lord Jesus
Christ loved this woman Mary so much. He intends to make a
memorial of her throughout the gospel age. Isn't that amazing? That we should
memorialize the Lord makes perfect sense. Why in the world would
the Lord care to memorialize one of us? Such is his love. Our Lord moved three of his New
Testament prophets to record this simple act of wholehearted
devotion. And here you and I are, 2000
years removed from the fact, reading about this precious woman,
Mary, Beloved of the Lord, and loving the Lord, pouring out
an extravagant sum upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
we can hardly find a better illustration of the attitude of the whole
church towards her husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary's a picture
of the church here. Do you realize the whole church
does this? in one way or another. This is our attitude towards
the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don't think of Christ
what Mary thought of Christ, you don't know Christ. You haven't
seen Christ. You've not beheld His glory or
come to understand His love and mercy and grace towards you.
I realize that maybe we've never had an alabaster box full of
spikenard or something like that. But brethren, if you would not
give yourselves 100% mind, body, soul, and strength in devotion
to the Lord Jesus Christ, if you would actually say to Him,
no, you got your 10%, you got your one of seven days, you got
your due attention, if that's your attitude, you don't know
Him. Mary is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the whole
church loves Christ like she did. I'm sure Mary didn't demonstrate
it this way every day, but that's the general tone of the heart
of God's people. Nor can we find a better illustration
of how the world values the worship of Christ than we find in Judas's
and the other disciples' response. And our Lord's reaction to all
of this shows what he thinks of his beloved wife, her devotion
to him, and the world's reaction to it. Now, believe it or not,
that's just the introduction. But that's kind of normal with
my way of preaching, isn't it? Let me see if I can get through
a few points now that we've told the story. We've set up the picture. We ought to be able to make the
points pretty quick. First of all, let's look at the worship
of God's church. First of all, the worship of
God's church is not part of the world's worship. This dinner
was being given in honor of Christ. Mary's act of worship was not
on the agenda. We are surrounded by Christianity,
aren't we? And we are surrounded by people
doing things in honor of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'm not
going to say who's truly worshiping and who's not. That's not my
business. But you and I know full well that not everybody
that says they're trying to honor Christ, that that's what their
worship service is about. You know, we're doing all the
glory of God and all that kind of stuff. Those are words that
people learn to say. I hope it's not just words that
we've simply learned to say. I hope they're real when we say
them. But the world's worship of Christ does not have anything
like this on the schedule. We have that order of service,
and of course I put that on there on our bulletin simply so you
can read it, and that way if you didn't hear it clear when
the numbers announced, you can read what it is, provided I type
it right. Churches have their order of
worship, and normally you'll find nothing like this on it.
The world does not worship Christ like his church worships the
Lord Jesus Christ. How is that? Well, it's a wholehearted
act of complete devotion. I look at that alabaster box,
which in itself was a valuable thing, and inside is the costly
perfume. And Mary takes that, and like
I said, she didn't open the box, she didn't uncork the top of
it, she broke it. And while Mary is a picture of
the church of the Lord Jesus, that alabaster box full of ointment
is a picture of Mary. And she would gladly have her
entire person broken open that her love of the Lord Jesus Christ might
come out fully. She breaks herself upon Him. She holds nothing back. Wholehearted. Complete. Brethren, is our Lord worthy
of any less? Now, I know that we've got our
lives to lead, and by that I mean we've got our jobs to do, we've
got our families to raise. This is not addressing that issue. This is talking about heart stuff. This is talking about where real
worship goes on. We worship Him from the Spirit.
And brethren, we are, if we belong to Christ, we are 100% wholeheartedly,
never was that word put to better use, wholeheartedly in love and
devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our flesh gets in the way. Yes,
it does. But when it gets in the way,
it's getting in the way. We count it an obstruction, don't
we? We don't consider the worship of God an obstruction to our
lives. We consider the lives we have
to live sometimes to be an obstruction to the worship of our God. Thirdly, Mary's act of worship
pictures the worship of Christ's church because it is a worship of the
whole Christ, head to toe. You know, the Lord Jesus Christ
is not a buffet. He is not a smorgasbord and you
can go choose the parts of him you like. Well, you know, a true
believer can choose the parts of Christ he likes because he
likes everything about the Lord Jesus Christ. As that woman in
Song of Solomon said after going through the details of the man
she loved, she said, he's altogether lovely. There are very few people in
this world that you would say of them, well, they're pretty
all over. Usually you'd say, well, yeah,
so-and-so's a nice looking person, of course, got that big whatever
on the side of his head. I was looking at me in the mirror
and said, good grief. Started to look like a dot-to-dot
puzzle, you know. Well, they're attractive, but
kind of short. You look at the Lord Jesus Christ,
there's nothing about Him not to love. Head-to-toe worship. Head-to-toe
affection. Everything He is and everything
He has done is in our hearts and minds beautiful, desirable. And then the worship of the Lord
Jesus Christ by His church. is a blessing to everyone. It
says she poured out that perfume. She poured it on the Lord, that's
the only one she was thinking about. But it said the fragrance
filled the whole house. Isn't that something? This beautiful
fragrance, which they probably almost never got to smell because
it's so expensive. It fills the house and they go,
what a waste. Instead of going, oh boy, that's
nice. They said, what a waste. What
a waste. Oh, how bitter and cold and dark
and hard even the hearts of believers can become sometimes. That in the worship of the Lord
Jesus Christ, they find things faulty rather than beautiful. They look at how others worship. And I'm talking about among true
believers, because the disciples did this, we've all done this.
And they look over at someone else and say, they shouldn't
do that, or they ought to be doing so and so. Now, brethren,
the Scriptures do teach us that as brothers and sisters, and
members of the body, we are to counsel and instruct one another.
We're not talking about when people are out of line doing
that which is a shame to the Lord Jesus Christ. We're talking
about the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, let us not find fault with
one another's worship. Let's be happy for it when we
see it in whatever measure it's given. And if someone seems extravagant,
if someone seems to be, quote, overdoing it, instead of saying,
what a waste, let us say to ourselves, why am I not that extravagant
in my worship of the Lord Jesus Christ? The world's reaction was, what
a waste. If you worship Christ like Mary
did, the world will consider your life to be a waste. Why did you break yourself open
to that? Why did you pour yourself out
completely to that? Yeah, go to church, but come
on, give it a rest. Give it a rest? Shall I give a rest to that which
I love to do? I realize, like our Lord said
to the disciples, the spirit's willing, the flesh is weak. Yeah,
there's only so much our bodies can do, no matter how much our
spirits may want to do. But let us never say unto our
hearts, okay, heart, that's enough, you don't have to worship Christ
anymore. The world will say that. I remember thinking one time,
and I believe this is a way for us to live, and look at this,
let us so live our lives that if what we believe about the
Lord Jesus Christ is true, or excuse me, if what we believe
about the Lord Jesus Christ proves not to be true, then indeed,
our lives were an utter waste. But what we believe about the
Lord Jesus Christ is true, and that means that a life devoted
to him, in whatever way that devotion must express itself,
A life devoted to him is not a waste, even if that life is
never known by anybody but Christ to whom it was devoted. Now our
Lord saw to it that Mary, Mary's act here was memorialized. But
that was so we would understand. He will have the worship of his
church and he will parade as a matter of his own glory before
the rest of the world. He will exhibit the love that
his church has for him to answer the rebellion of the world. You go on worshiping him. And
then last, how our Lord responds to those who take exception to
the full devotion of his church. Leave her alone. Why bother her? She does, it was intended, it
was purposed that she would do this. And she's done it in respect
of my burial. Why are you and I here today? because he was killed and buried
and rose again for us. Isn't that what all our worship
is about? Everything we do centers around that event. And even though
Mary didn't understand it, that's what her worship was about. The sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And the Lord, it says the Lord
inhabits the praises of Israel, His true Israel, the church.
He inhabits her worship. He dwells in her and with her. And she worships Him, and He
delights in that worship. And He will tell the whole world,
leave her alone or face Me. And the world won't leave us
alone. And the world will face him. Such is the love of our
Savior for us. May his love for us prompt similar
devotion as we see in Mary from us, our Heavenly Father. Thank
you for this example of Mary. And may her example find expression
in us. Lord, you're worthy of it, there's
no question there. You're worthy of more than a
broken alabaster box of ointment. You're worthy if we are broken,
broken completely open in pursuit of you and in the expression
of worship towards you. Is there a praise from us that
doesn't belong to you? Is there a word of thanksgiving
from us that should go anywhere else but upon you? Is there a
drop of love that we should reserve to some other power than you?
Oh, our Lord, you are worthy of all glory, all honor. You're worthy of all our hearts. Blessed be your name, today,
tomorrow, and forevermore.