This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at www.gracetruth.org and www.anchoringfaith.org. A
people for His glory, by His grace. In this passage, as you've noticed,
we are reviewing and reviewing and reviewing the reality of
what has taken place here in this narrative. It's also important
to remember that the narrative is something that we observe.
We're looking at what took place and we're observing it through
the text of scripture. And so in that observation, we're
supposed to place ourselves in the midst of that with the mindset
of those who were the original hearers, with the mindset of
that reality that Jesus did what he did and said what he said
and things of that nature. And it's real easy, and this
is a repeat, you all know this, but it's real easy for us to
say, well, there's not anything commanded here, there's not anything
taught here, we're just supposed to know the story, we get the
story, Lazarus is alive, yee-haw, let's move on to chapter 13.
But that's not the experience that we see in the narrative,
is it? I mean, do you really think if your brother was raised
to life by the Lord that, oh, cool, it's done, now what's for
lunch? I mean, is that really how nonchalant you think these
people approached what Christ did? You think that the very
truth that God the Holy Spirit established these words for our
benefit, for our joy, is for us to just go, okay, we know
the story, now that's enough, let's just learn something else.
See, we live in a day and time where the Christian faith as
a culture, which is not the Christian faith, but the Christian faith
as a culture is really just a list of things that people want to
learn to do. How should we dress? How should we speak? How should
we think? How should we act? How should
we walk? How should we spend? How should we buy? How should
we do all of these things? What is it that we're supposed
to be doing? How are we supposed to interact? What do we do when
someone spits at us? What do we do when someone winks
at us? What do we do when someone pulls us off in traffic? Or pulls
out in front of us. Not runs us off the road. I mean,
we call the cops. But, you know. What do we do when we're feeling
blue? What do we do when we experience?
And that's really what has happened in the world. People get a little
bit of truth, but they're not born again. And then the sheep
who are born again, the elect who God makes alive without proper
teaching, they fall into just whatever the culture shows them.
Whatever the culture shows them. I have an empathetic ear, and
that doesn't mean that I like to listen to people. It just
means when I'm around certain individuals, and some of you
will attest to this, that if they're real country, I can speak
real country. If there's a little slang, I
can speak with a little slang. And I don't notice, it's not
like I say, okay, country boy coming out. I mean, it's not
like I'm turning that on. It just sort of happens. It's
just a natural outcome of an ear that hears pitch and tone
and emulate it. As long as it's within the normal
range of my voice. The same thing is true with our
behavior. We begin to emulate that which we think is Christian
based on the fact that many people who take the label Christian,
the proximity of the locations of Christians, start to do those
Christian things. And that's sort of what happens.
And that's where we are as a culture. That's where the American church
is by far. It's given doctrine to the garbage
can by way of imitating that which we are just, through osmosis,
learning. And it takes It takes a work
of God and it takes the word of God for us to see that. And
when we see that, it's more than just a paradigm shift. It's more
than just, oh, wow, I'm just sort of, man, it's an epiphany. And for me, it was an epiphany
that caused great depression. It was an epiphany that caused
me to want to die in my flesh, to want for God to take me away
from the world that I had so passionately preached the word
and then segregated the teaching of scripture to an elite group
of people rather than to the hungry sheep of Christ. And I
was taught to establish pragmatism far and above doctrine. And that's
what the devil does. I remember several years ago
I preached a little summer series. You know, during the summer sometimes
our attendance is varied because we travel and do some things.
So I'd hate to go through four weeks of John and have the church
be gone. So I did a little summer series
called The Devil in the Pulpit. And it's how the teaching, the
preaching of the Word of God through the history of the United
States had come to be really the devil's platform And that
sounds weird to say that kind of stuff, because people would
say, well, that's not the devil preaching there. The devil's
not using that pastor. The devil uses most pastors. I'd say that the devil uses most
sermons. The devil uses most churches. The devil uses most ministries.
The devil is actively, by the will and the sovereignty of God,
utilizing most. And when I say most, I mean most. If you were to ask me to put
a list of names on a piece of paper, I wouldn't need a whole
piece of paper of people that I believe are solidly in the
truth of Christ in their teaching. It's hard to put names on a piece
of paper. Because the culture, according
to what Paul would tell the Thessalonians, what does he tell the Thessalonians?
He tells the Thessalonians that what? that God will send a delusion,
and that through the delusion that many people will believe
the lie that is being purveyed as the truth. You see what our
culture did to that? You wanna see what the deception
of God through the enemy to the reprobate looks like? We think as a culture, oh, that's
the cults. Oh, that's the Mormons. Oh, that's
the Kingdom Hall. That's the Russellites. Call them what they are. Oh, that's the world religions. That's the Eastern mysticism.
That's the Roman Catholics. That's all of the... No, it's
us. Because that's obviously not
true according to the text of Scripture. But when we take the
skin of truth and we layer it over a lie, then what we end
up with is what? A lie. And cultural Christianity is
the biggest lie of the enemy. And it's not new. The lie of the enemy started
when in his heart he said, I will ascend the mountain of the gods.
I will stand next to Elohim and bask in His glory. Look at me. See, what Lucifer could not fathom
is that he was indeed only a reflection of his Creator. that who He was
and what He was and how He was displayed was only that which
God had permitted Him to be. And it was not for His glory,
but for the glory of God as Creator. But He looked in the mirror of
His soul, And said to himself, look how God has made me. Wow, I'm something to behold. Praise God. Wait a minute, shouldn't
I also be praised? Because look at me. You see how
that looks? And then he offered that same
delusion to the first couple. God is withholding that which
is amazing in you. You are the Imagio Dei. In you is the image of God. You
are set apart above all of creation so that you could know all things
and He withholds these things from you. If you do that which
God said not to do, you will see all things as God sees them. You will know evil. Now what did that do? That's almost as if the enemy
said to Eve, you will be able to see me. And nothing's changed. It's not
new. It happened with Cain. And we've learned in the Midweek
in Romans that this purpose of election stands. God's sovereignty stands. All
that takes place, all that He saves stands. We know, we know
the truth of what God has established for His own glory. And we see the narrative of Scripture
And in this particular text, we see a comparison between groups
of people. We see groups of people who worship
Christ and groups of people who don't. But in all of this group,
we see worshipers who all claim to be worshiping God. Now see,
that's where we need to focus this morning. That's what we
need to focus this morning, church, because the reason we're here
every week, week after week after week, is not so that you can
grow as philosophers, not so that you can grow as theologians,
so that you can grow as Christ followers. So that we can grow
as a people who have been saved by grace for the sake of the
glory of God the Father. That our intimacy with each other
is absolutely divinely established by God the Holy Spirit and that
it is a spontaneous and supernatural work of God whereby we have unity
without having any affinity. Let me say that again. We have
unity with no affinity. The demonic says you must have
an affinity with someone in order to love them. That being in a practical sense.
We've got to have something people like. We've got to do something
people like. We've got to be something people like. Beloved, if we all shared
the same mind, we'd love each other. This is the establishment
of what Paul is trying to establish in his metaphor of having the
mind of Christ, which is ours. Have this mind. We know Christ,
for He loves us. He's known us eternally. He's
loved us eternally. It's all synonymous. And therefore, we are a different
people. not like the cults of the day,
not like the world religions of the day, not like the false
converts of the day, not like the traditionalism of the day.
We are not bound by what we do and bound by how we approach
things and bound together by anything but the Spirit of God. Because we've been, as Eddie
said yesterday, baptized into Christ and all that He is and
the establishment of His purposes in redemption is why He created
the world to begin with when He said, let there be light. It was for the sake of redeeming
His people to the praise of His glorious grace. And every point
of history from start to finish is to that end. But oh, through
the wiles of history, will there always be religious people, and
I'm not using religion as in the practices. We practice religion
today. We sit there, I stand here, you
listen, I talk, we pray, we sing, we do this, we do that, we do
that, we'd have the Lord's, I mean, these are practices. I'm not
talking about religion in that way of practices and disciplines. You know what I mean. I'm talking
about like the Pharisees. You see, the Pharisees get a
bad rap, don't they? I mean, they should. Especially in Jesus'
day, they should get a bad rap. They hated God. They served the
devil. They taught the word of God by
the enemy's purpose, which is really by God's purpose. Reprobate they were, not each
and every one of them, but as a whole. would not believe, they
could not believe. God forbid them to believe. He
kept them from seeing. He reprobated them actively pursuing
their destruction. This is the God of the Bible.
But you, beloved, this is not you, beloved. You have been born
of God before the world was. He loved you and set forth time
and all of creation in His covenant of grace to redeem you out of
the world of fallen men. But in some sense, then the Pharisees,
I believe, do get a bad rap because they get a bad rap in our traditions,
as I've been talking about for the last 15 minutes. In our traditional
mindset, they get a bad rap because we fail to see just how close
the culture of Christendom is to Pharisaism. As a matter of
fact, I'd say it's worse. It's worse. So we're here today in our 99th
sermon of the Gospel of John. Tomorrow's the grand anniversary
of, or next week's the grand anniversary of 100. In John 12, let's read the first
11 verses again. Six days before the Passover,
Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus
has raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him
there. Martha served, and Lazarus was
one of those reclining with him, Jesus, each time, at the table. Mary, therefore, took a pound
of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet
of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled
with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his
disciples, parentheses here, he was who was about to betray
him, said, why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and
given to the poor? He said this not because he cared
about the poor, but because he was a thief. And having charge
of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was in it.
And Jesus said, leave her alone. I'm going to correct this. For she has kept it for the for
the purpose of my burial in that way. For the poor you always
have with me, will always have with you, but you will not always
have me. Verse nine, when the large crowd
of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came not only
on account of Jesus, but also to see Lazarus, whom Jesus had
raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans
to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him, many
of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. We'll stop
there. Last week we looked at the worship
of Mary through this oil. You see in Luke's account, in
the synoptics there, that she broke the jar and she dumped
it all out. That's what happens. That's what
happens. And I'm not going to spend any
time technically on this variation that you see here in the ESV
and other places because it's not necessary for the sake of
the teaching, but it's something we can get hung up on. We want
to see the narrative. We want to plant ourselves in it as the experience
unfolds, and then we want to contemplate, so what? Now, what
difference does this make in the lives of those people there
that we may apply it also to our lives? So that's the purpose
of preaching. We teach, you write doctrine, and then we help application.
So I want to help you with the application of this today. Mary dumped it all out, and Judas
is upset about it. And if you remember what Jesus
says in the other Gospels, he says that what Mary did here,
he will make it as a reminder for generations to come. And
if you think about who else was in that house, it was made much
of, nobody. Mary is remembered for what she
did. Why? Because in one way she's
an object lesson, and in another way she's an illustration of
sorts. Mary did something, and as we saw last week, it was an
expression of love and gratitude and worship to Jesus. And the
aroma of that nard filled the house and it stayed there like
burnt toast for many days. So people could not, or burnt
popcorn, for those of you who use microwave popcorn, I mean,
you know, you just, you can't get it out. So there was a reminder
there. And it's easy for us as Christians
in our day to say, oh, no, no, no, no, we need to worship like
Mary. Let's get oil and rub it all over each other's feet. Or
let's give every expensive thing we have to the preacher. That's
not a bad idea. It's not biblical. Or let's give
up everything we own of any value for the sake of the ministry.
Yes, let's do that. That's not the application here
either. The application here is to observe the work of God,
establishing divine affection for Jesus Christ in the fullness
of his glory as the creator of the world, who laid his life
down as the lamb of God to take away the sins of his people alone,
that he might raise them up again in the last day as he took his
own life and raise it up again for the glory of God. That's
the application. So how does it look if we really
establish it more and more? What do I do with it? Well, it
all boils down to this. It's a matter of treasure. Now,
let me give a caveat here. This word that I use, treasure,
and desire, and affection, it's very Edward-esque. It's very
Edward-esque. If you know what I mean, Jonathan
Edwards, not the Carolinian governor, but the old theologian. Pastor. And contemporary people
have established the writings of Edwards to such a place where,
and not just him, but I just use him as an example, to where
they burden the sheep of Christ to check their affections. Now,
there's nothing wrong with checking our affections. But they do so in
such a way that they make it conditional to true life. If you don't love Jesus this
way, you're not born again, baloney. So we don't love your spouse
like Christ of the church. You're not really married Well, then
tell your wife that brothers Love you like I'm supposed to
so we're not married anymore. See how far that goes My children
don't obey so they don't love me for obedience if you love
me you'll obey me right children It's the best way to show me
you love me. Oh, you don't know baby. You're not my child See,
it's an absurd humanistic philosophy of stupidity. And I say that
because I want you to understand how vile it is to make affection
and the depth of affection a condition of grace. And moreover, it's terrible to
make it a condition of evidences of grace, whereby one can measure. Because, friends, unless you're
a good, good liar, you must recognize that there are times when our
affection for one another is just like not even on the plate. I don't care sometimes about
life. Do you? Sometimes I'm out there
working in the yards going, why? I don't care. I don't want to
do this. Sometimes I'm hurt or I'm disappointed
or I'm angry or I'm ill and I feel like I don't care anymore. Do
you ever feel that way? And it might be for five seconds,
five minutes, five days, five years. What does that have to
do with the work of Christ for you? What does that have to do
with the finished work of the gospel for you? Nothing. May
the Lord in His mercy and His timing by the Spirit of God,
through the means which He grants and continues us in the grace
that He's given us, establish us with a greater resolve to
love Him more, for He first loved us. And see, that's the difference
between these two types of worshipers that we're going to see today.
Christ loved some of them and hated most of them, and the ones
He hated would not love Him back. Why? Because He did not love
them first. And had He not loved us, we would not love Him either. What about love? It's a matter
of treasure. Mary loved Lazarus, didn't she? We see that lament
when she runs out. Martha's like, hey, the teacher
wants to see you privately. She's running out, making much to do,
and everybody follows her. Why? Because it was the will
of God then that Jesus be recognized on the scene. And Mary sort of
blames Jesus. She loves Jesus, but she loves
Lazarus too. And Mary says, Jesus, had you
been here, teacher, had you been here, he would not have died.
That's, in some way, sort of saying, why weren't you here?
But I'm not going to impose on Mary what the scripture doesn't
give me. We just know what she said. I can't tell you what her
heart was truly thinking. But that's probably true, logically. So Mary and Martha loved Jesus,
and Mary and Martha loved Lazarus, and then Lazarus died, and the
only thing they have left is Jesus, but they're frustrated.
They love Jesus, but they love Lazarus, and now that Lazarus
is dead, their love for Jesus is a little bit shaky. But here's the cool thing. Jesus
loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. And Jesus loved Martha, Mary,
and Lazarus. This is reviewed from chapter 11. Jesus loved
Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, so, in this way, that Jesus decreed
that Lazarus would die for the sake of the glory of God, and
then waited to make sure he was good and decomposing before he
went to town. That's love for you. Why? Because Jesus also loved the
glory of the Father. Jesus treasured. That means he
cherished the ultimate treasure, which is God's glory. And God's
glory is specifically and passionately and powerfully revealed in the
election and the saving and the redemption of His elect. So now
we have, in the time we have left, a couple of thoughts. We
have a dinner party here, right? And at this dinner party, there
were a lot of people. There were some followers of Christ, which are
called disciples. We don't know who they were. Friends of the
family, et cetera, et cetera. We just know there was a lot
of people, and the only ones that are named there are Judas and some disciples,
Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Chances are there were many people.
I don't want to know how many people, but I know when our family
gets together, we could have 50 people easily without even
inviting people. Now, there's food, and we're
showing up. I mean, you know. So I mean that could be a rough
estimate. Does it matter? It doesn't matter. The point
is Mary gave a treasure, a priceless heirloom. How'd she get it? Don't know. Doesn't matter. It
was hers to give. It didn't belong to Martha. Martha would have stopped that.
It wasn't the neighbors, it was her. She broke the jar and dumped
it out to anoint Jesus because she loved Christ in a way that
her flesh could not. And so Mary gave of her treasure.
But then the other argument can be made as we see the synoptics
on this very occasion that Martha worked and served and Mary worshiped
and anointed and listened and Jesus says that Mary chose the
better But Martha wasn't wrong, you see. It's not sinful to labor and
serve for Christ. It's not sinful to be hospitable. When it all comes down to it,
and this is a lesson I have yet to learn, it doesn't matter if
the floor is clean when we're sitting at the feet of the word
of God. It doesn't matter if the air works. It does for some
of us, medically. But in the end, does it? Does
it matter the reputation of our ministry and the lost community
of the bourgeois? That was rude, I'm sorry. Martha gave her treasure as well,
her service. Nobody really fussed about that, but people began
to fuss, and disciples at this dinner party, like Judas Iscariot,
the one who would betray Jesus, had a problem with it. Why? Because
his treasure was himself. His treasure was his greed. His
treasure was his ability to take what he wanted for himself. And all the people at this dinner
party were worshiping something. And people like Judas was saying
that the people who worship like Mary are silly and foolish. Don't do that. I mean, I'm going
to be honest with you. If I'm sitting at somebody's
house and they bust oil on my head, I'm going to be offended.
Like I was one time as a guest pastor sitting on the stage,
and while I'm praying, after preaching, somebody splashes
oil on my face. And I'm like, in Jesus' name,
amen, what the heck are you doing? You just messed up my glasses.
I mean, you know, it's just, I don't, it's inappropriate.
Don't splash me with stuff. Don't spit on me, don't splash
me, you know. But it was very customary for it to be anointed
in this time, but not in that way. A little dab here, a little
dab there, whatever, but not all of that. It would have been
just as honorable to take that expensive nard and rub Jesus'
feet with a little bit of it, like I talked about last week.
But no, Judas couldn't stand that. He rebuked the worship
of Mary. How dare you do this? You could
have sold that. Why did you do that? See, that's
what's happening here. Not stop and save it. She couldn't
save it. She broke the jar and poured
it out. I don't want to deal with that. Just trust me. Some of these people considered
the worship that Mary had was wasteful and that their idea
of worship, which would be to sell and serve the poor, would
have been a better act of worship to the glory of God. Is it not?
No, it's not. It's not, not in this context. So there's some people who thought,
well, feed the poor would be good. Judas didn't want to feed the
poor, but he used that because he knew how to manipulate people.
Others desired to have what was being poured out. Like Judas. Let's sell it and keep the money.
Or let's just have that. Or I wish I had that to pour
on Jesus. Now she's going to be a favorite
of Jesus. Now she's going to be talked about all over the
world about the woman who poured a year's salary on Jesus' feet
and washed it up with her hair. I know. I'll cut her hair off
when she goes to sleep. I mean, you see that? That same
insane line of thinking that we have in our day? Others coveted. And then after the act was over,
the aroma filled the house as we spoke about last week. This
aroma didn't stop. It lingered for probably a week
or longer. And every time someone else would
come into the house, what's that smell? You didn't hear what Mary
did? She wasted an entire pound of
nard. You know how you get when you're
being emphasized in a pound. Your D's become very, whatever
that would sound like in the language they spoke. But what
really happened here is that Mary revealed that her true treasure
was not that valuable nard, but was Jesus. She had no affection
all of a sudden for the treasure that passes away, including her
brother. Because there had been a work
of God in her to give her an affection that was beyond this
world, that was out of this world, that was established by God. And it was worth much more to serve
Christ than it was to have anything. What does this mean for us? Why
are we not pouring out our priceless treasure in the service and worship
of Christ? See, now I could take this sermon,
that's why I gave you the caveat to start with, because now every
one of you are captivated by that rhetoric. And if we did an altar call or
an offering plate, or a sign-up sheet, everybody'd write something. You know what I'm saying? Oh
no, I need to serve, I need to give, I need to do whatever,
I need to make a pledge, you see? See, that stuff gets me.
Why are we not serving, laying our lives down like Paul? Don't
you want to be part of the bigger picture? Don't you want to be
remembered a thousand years from now like Mary? Oh, whoa, what
are you going to do? Pledge as we build this new building
and that playground and that sports field. Pledge, be a part
of the work of God. It hangs us and it hooks us.
It's the flesh. I mean, we're all sitting here
with the knowledge of the gospel of grace. We know good and well
the deception of the enemy, but people can twist the scripture
and the application so quickly that every one of us in the room
are answering that question to the negative, I need to do more,
right? I should do more. I wish I could
do more. I wish I had a heart to do more. Well, you're off
the hook. That's not the point of this
text. It's not to teach you how you should worship. It's not
to teach you that you should be as good as Mary. Because you
are as good as Mary. Because you've been bought by
Jesus Christ's blood. Jesus' blood is worth far more than
nard. And that nard was poured out for Jesus as a longing to
anoint him for burial. And Jesus' blood never quits. Why haven't we this same type
of heart? Because sometimes God doesn't
call every person to that end. And our worship may look different,
but our affections can be the same. You see that? And yes, there is a time where
we, to evaluate our lives, we should always look and pray that
our Lives are not our own that God, you would establish in us
to lead us away from temptation. Jesus taught us how to pray.
We should just follow his instruction. And then also that we would have
a heart for one another, that we'd have a heart for the word,
but we're not all called in the same way to do the same exact
things. We also, some of us may not have
been taught by God yet. Mary was taught by God the Holy
Spirit to see Jesus for who He really was to a depth that some
of us have never ever seen yet. But even then, it was such a
shadow. It was still a great chasm between the trueness of
what she shall see when she stands glorified before her Savior.
You know what's crazy? And I'll say it again later in
the sermon. There won't be any anointing of Jesus by any worldly
good when we stand glorified before Him, because we shall
also be like Him. And the anointing of Jesus will
be the establishment of us in perfection without blemish. That
His blood had finished the work and that the promises of God
the Father have been brought to fruition in this covenant
that a people now forever and ever and ever shall be before
Him. And you've heard me tell the
story of how loved ones who I have lost in the past have come and
gone in this world. And I've even said at funerals
that I've preached, if these people are in between me and
my Savior, they shall be trampled upon when I die. Hopefully I'm not wearing boots.
I'm just jesting. Sometimes we've not been taught
yet. Sometimes we've not matured yet in our understanding of grace. Sometimes we've not been disciplined.
Do you remember what discipline is? It's not punitive. It's never
punishment. It's sometimes, most of the time,
not even in response to any negative thing. It's just the positive
doctrinal pressing of God for those He loves. He only disciplines
those He loves. You go to the Marine Corps boot
camp, you learn discipline. That when you get out, you realize
you were insane. So you have an awareness. and
then you're a machine. You can do things that your body
could not do some 12 or 16 weeks before. It's amazing what discipline
does. It transforms us in such a way,
our minds, our bodies, our abilities, our agilities. Spiritually speaking,
some of us are not disciplined. We haven't been disciplined.
That is one of the main and primary reasons we gather together as
the church under the command of Christ, that we continue to
walk together and that we help one another to grow through discipline
to maturity, to do the work of the ministry. But in our culture,
to do the work of the ministry means you've got to have something
happening, a hole in that happening, and a person to plug in that
hole. That's nowhere found in the Bible, ever. So it is sinful
to make that the heartbeat of a ministry. Jesus told him in John 8, if
God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God
and I'm here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. See,
Mary loved Jesus in a way that only God could give her knowledge
to do. Mary's biggest loss before this
was Lazarus. Mary's blame was Jesus. Mary's
treasure was that nard. Then, Jesus was worth it all. Remember, Jesus refused to allow
people to talk with Lazarus after the resurrection. He said, I'm
binding. Get him out of here. Get him out of here. So nobody
bothered Lazarus. But now the Passover is coming,
and there's a feast in Jesus' honor at their home. And people
are hearing that. Word gets around. It's amazing
what you could do without Facebook in that day. Everybody still
knew everything. And so people began to go. What's happening here? But as
she poured all of that out and everybody had their different
ways of worshiping themselves and different things, Jesus says something in verse
seven in response to what Judas says, leave her alone, leave
her alone. She didn't sell this because
she saved it for my burial. And the Greek there is conflicted. But it doesn't tell us that she's
going to use it on Jesus' dead body. It tells us that she, at
this moment, is anointing him because she knows he's going
to die. Mary gained nothing by pouring
out the oil. Now listen to this. Walk with me. She gained nothing
in the giving of this treasure. She didn't exchange it for anything.
She didn't sell it for anything. It did not purchase her anything.
She put it in its proper place before Jesus. She loved Jesus
because He first loved her. So in the heart of Mary, there
is no greater pleasure by doing this than there was
before she did this. And Jesus did not look at her
and love her more because she did something miraculous for
Him. He did not look at her and say, wow, she really loves me.
She poured out all this oil. Of course she did this, because
it is God who had done the work in her heart. This is God's work through the
Spirit, giving her a true, mature, spiritual sense of being able
to see Jesus for who He truly was, and nothing else really
mattered. She probably thought to herself, I've been saving
this since I was a child. And I worship it. I'm through
with it. I know. I'll pour it out on Jesus. This type of worship for her
was not a condition of her salvation. And quite honestly, as I've already
said, it's not necessarily a result of salvation in all of us. Your joy in Christ will be directly
relative to the discipline of God in you, really. And He will
mold your heart toward His Word. And He will mold and draw your
heart toward His people. And this is not an act of the
flesh. It is a result and a work of
God. I say that because it is a response. It is a response of affection
that God purposes and puts in His people. It's not something
we should try to copy. And that's what we're here to
do today, as I've said before. We're here today to see Jesus
by the teaching of His Word, to do this week after week, and
to gain the picture of who Christ is, that as the Lord wills, as
we continue to grow in the Word and the knowledge of grace, and
to learn the truth, we are what? We are growing more in love with
the mercy and the grace of God by the work of the Spirit. And
in doing so, we also are growing more in love with one another.
And the depths of that cannot be measured, because God calls us each to
his own purpose, as he also calls each of us equally to Christ. But there's another group of
people here who are shadow seekers. And let's not be like the shadow
seekers of antiquity, but let's pray, beloved, as the sheep of
Christ, that God would cause us to see the treasure, who is
Jesus. We should not imitate this type
of worship toward Jesus in practice. Because really, Mary is the only
person in the world who has ever, or will ever, or should ever
worship Jesus in this way. Practically. He will never again
sit at a table in someone's house where someone can have the opportunity
to pour oil on his body and feet. So we don't want to take this
act of worship and make it a picture and then illustrate it and make
it an icon. Because that's idolatry. And
then we're worshiping Mary's worship rather than the one she
worshiped. See how close this is? Remember
the delusion I talked about in the very beginning of the sermon
today? It's very easy to just get overrun with idolatry. That's why John says, Beloved,
keep yourself from idols. The next time someone is able
to touch the feet of Jesus in their flesh will be at a glorified
reunion. And the worship there cannot
be tethered to the treasures of this world. Johnny, but says
do not love the world of the things in the world for they're
all passing away So there's nothing that we can bring. I want to
bring my grandmother's great China to eat with Jesus. He don't
want that trash With the quiller sell it No, I want to I want to you know,
I want to drive my nice antique vehicle to the gates of he don't
want that I He doesn't need that. He Himself
is sufficient for all that we need to worship, and His work
and His redemption of His people is sufficient. Jesus would be dead very soon,
and instead of selling this for the poor, she kept it for this
very purpose, to anoint Him for burial, which she did that moment,
using all of that. She didn't save any of it. And
Jesus would be dead very soon. but He is the resurrection and
life. Verse 9, this large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus
was there. They heard and they start to go and they heard not
only that Jesus was there but, oh, wait a minute, He's at Lazarus'
house. Let's go see Him and let's go see Lazarus. So you see what
the hubbub is, right? Here's the Passover. This is
an obligatory festival pointing back, alluding to the Exodus. where God spared His elect in
imagery, picture, by the blood of the Lamb, the shadow, and
all the firstborn were spared. And He brought them out of Egypt
by His mighty power, by Jesus Christ, by the Spirit who is
God, as we learned yesterday. And everybody's supposed to go
and come and worship Yahweh because He is the provider and the deliverer. And this group of people are
actually looking for the true purpose of Passover. They're not as caught up in Passover
anymore as a tradition as they were in Jesus. We've got to find
this man who raised this man to life. We've got to find Jesus
who we've been hearing about for three plus years. We need
to know where He is. I hear He's there. Let's go talk
to Him and see Him and learn from Him. And let's see and behold
the man He raised to life. So what happens when God reveals
to us the truth of the gospel of His Son is that all the stuff
that we used to hang on to as spiritual, we realize it wasn't
very spiritual at all. We realize it wasn't really Divine
in any way it was just there. It's just stuff we did and we
missed the point It flew right over our heads and that's what
was happening with the Jews of this day the reality of God is
Redeemer through Messiah had flown right over their head in
a spiritual sense So people were looking for Jesus
and because they were looking for Jesus and because some of
them were believing in Jesus What does this say? The chief
priest made plans to kill Lazarus also. Now I find this ridiculous. That men would seek to kill someone
who could raise someone from the dead and to kill the man
who was just raised from the dead. Logically, it's absurd. But that's just what blind deprivation
does. It just makes us stupid. And really, we are not wise,
are we? Christ is our wisdom. They sought to find and kill
them both. The Jews' treasure was not Christ. They would say, our treasure
is God. And so our nation is a nation
that honors God. We must preserve our nation.
It is better for one man to die than the whole nation to perish.
See, we're doing that which is glorifying to God. For if Rome
destroyed our nation, then God's representatives on earth would
not have light. Self-glory. If we aren't able
to worship, they cherish their religion, not God. They cherish
their tradition. They cherish their lineage. They
cherish their name. They cherish, let's put it in
common terms, their ministry, their legacy, their productivity. They cherish the numbers. They
cherished the budget, they cherished the outreach, they cherished
the missions, they cherished everything. Today, if somebody
was pouring out a bunch of nard, they say, don't waste that nard,
we could serve a missionary. How many people won't hear the
gospel because of that waste? Every elect will hear the gospel,
beloved. You can count on that. And these Jews did not treasure
Christ. They said that they were treasuring
the glory of God and thought that all these things were for
the glory of God. When Christ was the glory of
God, Christ is the glory of God sitting before them. And these Jews, they had a knowledge
of the truth. They knew the word. They knew
the prophecy. They knew without a shadow of
a doubt that Jesus was the one come from God. And he proved
it through the resurrection of Jesus. He proved it through his
own proclamation. And he didn't have to prove himself,
but he showed himself in that way. And miracles would not establish
life. Only the Spirit gives life. And that in itself is the greatest
miracle of God. So there's two groups here in
all of this, not many, but just two, and the groups are this,
those who worship man and those who worship Christ. And the inner circle of Jesus
had haters and man-worshippers, and the Pharisees were haters
and man-worshippers, and they hated the message so much that
they began to hate the messengers. And friends, I don't know about
you, maybe you don't dabble with too many enough people to deal
with it, but I find myself at the end of some days so flustered,
and my flusteredness is probably benign compared to most people's,
but so flustered or burdened that I'm thinking, who in the
world can ever thrive as a Christian in our culture? Who's ever gonna
be able to just stand up and have joy Because if I get ten questions
in my email box today, eight of them will be more trolling
than anything. They will talk about like, you
know, we have good comments on the teaching yesterday, but there
are also some messages that are just ridiculous. How dare you talk about the Spirit
that way? We know we control the Spirit.
Stuff like that, just silly stuff. And it can become overwhelming
And it's real easy to look at the attacks and look at the hatred.
It's sort of like in the teaching ministry that I have, I get to
teach in different venues. I get to teach in places some
people don't get to teach, sometimes schools, sometimes other places.
And it's funny because I'll be teaching And sometimes, and it's
usually, and this is sad to say, but it's usually a lady or a
woman, someone's wife in the audience, will glean something
from the word of God. Not from me, from God. And they'll
go back and tell their husband, and their husband's mad at me
because I've taught their wife something, contrary to what they believe.
Well, don't send her to teaching then. Don't send her here. So then I'm the bad guy. Just like I teach you every Sunday,
and people will go online and listen to the sermon who are
not part of our church, and they'll make a big to-do, and they'll
start to hate me, they'll start to hate you, just like they've
been doing since the day of Christ. Friends, that's what we have
to look forward to. No, we don't have persecution
like they had in the first century. We don't have persecution like
my friends that live in Kabul. We don't have persecution like
my friends who live in Turkey or India. We don't have that. I mean, we
get to eat in a minute and go home and play ball in the park
if you're silly enough to go outside in the hot week. We don't have to worry about
somebody busting in our house and killing us or arresting us. We don't
have the kind of person, but we will be persecuted by those
who claim to be God's people, you see. Just like this was God's
divine purpose in the days of Christ and the days of the apostles,
it is God's divine purpose for the perpetual church of His name
forever until we are all glorified together. That's the reality
of it, beloved. We who are worshipers of Jesus,
Paul made it clear to Timothy, those who desire to live a godly
life will be persecuted. People will hate you when you
adhere to the teaching of Christ and His sovereignty. And they will hate you when you
adhere to a solid gospel message that stands against, not in the
negative teaching aspect. It's not negative doctrinal exposure. It's just positive doctrinal
expression about who the Bible, who Christ is according to the
scripture, who the God of the true scripture is. By that teaching,
the negative comes flaring out. If you've ever been to a museum
and you see a picture, if a kid stuck a piece of gum on the picture,
you'd see that gum. If somebody put Waldo in the
corner of the Mona Lisa, you'd see Waldo. You walk into a living room,
you tell your children to clean up the living room, they've done
a wonderful job, but they leave a banana peel by the window.
Y'all didn't clean this room. We have a tendency to look at
that little, small spot of persecution and suffering and think that
it is everything. Friends, Christ is everything.
Just like that nard was nothing anymore, of no consequence, of
no value. It had no eternal value whatsoever.
Why not pour it out? Why not use it like Windex for a glorious
expression of love? Our lives need to be the same
way. Persecution needs to be drawn into the vial. Remember
those samples of cologne you used to get? Used to be in the
magazines? Be in the mailbox, crush, and
it's all over your bills? Now they just spray the magazines
and you can't get rid of it. I mean, imagine all the negative,
hateful persecution and stuff that you have to deal with by
being in Christ. It just fits in a vial. Just throw it away.
But how do we do that? We keep our eyes on who Christ
is. And we recognize that it's not
about human knowledge. We are not going to convince
people to be worshipers. We're not going to train them
to be worshipers. Only God, the Holy Spirit, will bring them
to life and give them the sight to see. That's it. That's it. And so they looked, and they
looked, and they planned, and they planned, and they thought
they were doing God's work by thwarting this new cult called
the Way for the glory of God. And what
they were actually doing was being used by the enemy, by the
sovereignty of God and the purposes of God the Father, to bring about
the salvation of the very people they hated. Keep that in mind, friends. We're
here today to learn that. We're here today to apply that.
We're here today to establish an intimacy with this truth that
we might have an intimacy with each other as we live it out.
That's real life. The seminary doesn't teach you
that. Only being in the body of Christ
can we learn and live these things. So my prayer for you today is
that you would see it. that you would see that the only
reality that we can truly find joy in is that Jesus Christ's
body was broken and His blood was shed and that His suffering
on the cross is sufficient for the righteousness of God and
His justice is satisfied for us, beloved, and He has given
us this truth by the power of the Spirit through the Word of
God and we are a people of His own possession. We are His prize. in God's greatest prize. We'll talk about this more next
week. It's the pouring out of His Son. That's God's greatest prize. Let's pray. Father, we are not hopeless. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
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