This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Good morning. If you turn in
your Bibles to John chapter 11, the last few verses, we're going
to move from there into chapter 12 this morning. Lord willing. A couple of things I want us
to see that aren't as clear as other things. But we all know
what's happened here. We all know this is the culmination
of Jesus' ministry. This is the final act before
the cross, the final miracle before the miracle of the resurrection
of himself. And what this does is it displays
the glory of God. It reveals God and his power
and his plan and his purpose. It reveals God in his person. That's what it means to see the
glory of God. It means to see God as he is in full. And so, Jesus Christ is the revelation
of God's fullest glory. I want you to think about that
as we continue in this, and I want you to know that this is what
is revealed to us by the new birth, by the Spirit at the new
birth. That we're able to see Christ
in such a way that we see the fullness of God. That which Moses
longed to see, we see. That the patriarchs, what they wanted to see, to feel
the presence. All of the millennia of worship
in the temple, in the tabernacle, in the wilderness of God's people,
they all wanted to see and experience the fullness, to behold God in
His fullness, to understand Him in His fullness. That is what
the gospel does. It displays that. So there is
nothing, listen to this, there is nothing withheld from us. Nothing that has been hidden
from us, nothing that is yet for us to see, except that when
we see that which we are already able to see face to face. But if we continue to look and
seek the face of God through what we can observe physically,
we will miss the very essence of His glory spiritually. The
glory of God is not to be manifest for physical all. It is always
and absolutely, surely revealed right now before us by the Spirit
of God in its fullness, and we are in all. Why then, some people would say,
do I not see that when I read the Bible? There's two possibilities. One possibility is that God has
not birthed you anew, that you are not yet given sight. That you might not be born again. See, those are difficult things
to say. And secondly, as Trey read a
fitting psalm, I didn't even tell him to do that, but it's
fitting. Think of who wrote Psalm 51 and
why. When He says, cleanse me, from
basically paraphrasing here, my bloody hands. He murdered
a man for his own lusts. Do not hide your face from me.
Do not take your spirit from me. So, the real possibility
also is this, that you may very well be in a place of stagnation. You may very well be in a place
that you are not eating of the divine work of Christ in a real
way. And you may be in a place where
your sin seems to have overrun you. And that is why the gospel is
exactly by its name, gospel, is because Christ has taken all
of this on Himself, and God the Father has crushed Him in our
place. And the fullness of everything
that God has, every spiritual blessing is to be experienced
this very moment, this very day, every moment that we are aware
and alive in Christ. But we have been sold a bill
of goods with nothing in the box. We've been sold a lie in
our culture that experiencing God is something that's that's
really surreal but it's a fantasy and these things that we look
forward to seeing in this experience are tangible as far as our life
goes. People claim to experience God
in healings, or experience God in feelings, or experiencing
God in activities, or experiencing God in and knowledge. But we
experience God by the Spirit in Christ. And that's revealed
to us through the Word that's written in the pages of our Scripture. Yet the only way we can experience
them in power is by God Himself. Through Christ, we are united
in the Spirit. And by the Spirit, we are united
with Christ. It's interesting to see how much
people labor over this life. It's interesting to see even
in the context of what we've seen in the last few weeks with
the Jews and how they labored in this life in their flesh to
experience God in a real way, which was all fake. It's fake. Jesus has said to them, unless
you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. That's what
he said. Unless you believe that I am
the God of all gods and the King of all kings and the Lord of
all lords, and that I am the one who with my power and by
my will created all things. Unless you believe that I am,
I am, and that I've come to save my people from my sins, particularly
and explicitly, you will die in yours. Unless you eat of My flesh and
drink of My blood, you will perish. snatches you, and drags you,
and throws you into the light of My righteousness by His mighty
power, you will perish in your sins. Unless you are born by
the Spirit alone, as He wishes, only to His people, you will
perish in your sins. Unless you drink of the living
water that wells up to eternal life, you will perish in your
sins. See, these are all the Gospel
proclamations of Jesus. All of them. These are not heady
debates to be dealt with in a classroom. These are not debates and arguments
to be dealt with as someone decides to be a theologian. These are
not discussions for the mature Christian. These are simple,
childish, easy, ridiculously sounding proclamations of God
Himself. The Father witnesses the work
of the Son. The Spirit witnesses the work
of the Son. The prophets and the apostles
write by the power of the Spirit. And all of this is who Christ
is in the fullness of the glory of God. The devil's greatest lie, you
ready? Is a cultural, free will, established
righteousness of good works, following the rules, being in
church, taking the Lord's table, being baptized, singing the songs,
hearing the preaching, and walking in a manner worthy of the culture.
That is the biggest lie that Satan has ever perpetrated in
the culture of our day. You say, well, Tippings, you're
being a little harsh. No, I am actually speaking the words of
Christ. Unless you believe that I am,
you will die on your sins. Everything that I am, everything
that I say, Jesus says, everything that I've declared to you, if
you hold to all of it but a small portion of none of it, you hold
to nothing. If you refuse Me in any part
of My sovereignty, of My election of you, you are dead in your
sins. You're dead. Because you have
come to the table of the Lord in a way that is unworthy. You
don't come and tell Jesus how He's going to die for you. You
don't come and tell the Christ how He is going to shed His blood
for you. You don't come and tell God face to face, this is how
you will apply your redemption to me, old man. Who speaks to
God? No one speaks to God in that
way. But that is the blindness that
is given by the God of this world who blinds the eyes of unbelievers
so that they cannot and will not be able to see the light
of the gospel in the face of Christ. That is the word of Paul
in 2 Corinthians 4. God Himself, through means that
we don't understand in the spiritual realm, keeps people from believing. And only God, in ways that we
cannot understand, causes people to see by the new birth of the
Spirit. My friends, that in itself is a gospel proclamation. It's
a gospel proclamation. But what happens when the gospel
is proclaimed to dead people who have not been made alive
by the Spirit? It conflicts with everything they've ever known.
And they measure the life of their Christianity against what
they just heard. And they go, but that makes all
of this worthless. Exactly. But I've been a Christian
for 30 years. No, you haven't. You're a Christian when you recognize
the truth of the gospel. Then you are a believer. Six and a half years ago, one
of my greatest mentors said to me that, and I've said this before
and you've heard me say it, that America has a love affair with
salvation experiences. See, we're not supposed to be
experiencing salvation. We're supposed to be experiencing
the glory of God. And friends, I'm here to tell
you, we have a mess on our hands.
We have a mess on our hands. Just as a way, because somebody
asked me, how many churches do you think in your area preach
the truth? I started looking for the list
of churches. Interesting. How many churches do you think
are just in this county? Over 200. Over 200. Over 600 in Bullock
County. And then I just stopped. Let's just take the 50 or 60
that we know about. And I started thinking, well, I don't know
what they preach. because they don't list their sermons. Let's
look at the sermon titles. Well, that's not the gospel.
That's not the gospel. The gospel can be found in that
sermon title. But if everybody who was in church
were Christians, then where is the gospel? Would the gospel
not be very prominent in our culture? When we declared that
Jesus is God and that He saves His people from their sins, when
we declared the truth of the context of Scripture, would people
not give a resounding Amen? But instead, they do what? They come to the table of disdain.
They come to a place of frustration. They come to a place of anger.
They come to a place of murder. How dare you defame my God that
way? My Jesus that way, they would
say. And they are correct. We defame the God and the Christ
of men. You know what I mean by that? The
Messiah that man has created after his own image. the God
that man has created. It doesn't matter that we call
Him Yahweh. It doesn't matter that we call Him Jehovah. It
doesn't matter that we call Him Jesus. It doesn't matter if we
use the words found in Scripture. So do the cults of Mormonism. So do the cults of Kingdom Hall. So do the cults of Rome. So do
the cults of Islam. And these aren't world religions.
These are cults. Well, that's not the definition
of a cult of course. I don't care who made the definition
of a cult. Anyone who claims to be in the name of God, no
matter what God it may be, and they have another God, then they're
wrong. They're a cult. Because you've either got the
people of Christ assembled, which is Ecclesia, the gathering, or
you've got cults, which is it? Keep all that in mind as we unpack
the latter part of chapter 11 and we go into chapter 12. Jesus tells them this illness
will not end in death, but that the glory of God may be revealed
through it, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
This will not end in death. And we saw over the last few
weeks, we saw the faith and the lack of faith in Martha and Mary,
right? They believed who Christ confessed himself to be by the
Spirit, just like Peter. Who do you say that I am? And
he says, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. For man has not
revealed these things to you, but God has revealed these things
to you. Martha expresses the faith and
then yet she doubts in the same breath. She has a weakness of
her faith. She knows Christ by the spirit
of God, but then also in her flesh, which is much, much active,
very active, is overtaken her faith in a sense. Not effectually,
but in that moment. And then Mary comes out and just
says, if you'd have been here, he wouldn't have died. The focus
is on that which has already happened, not on the one who
is the life. And then Jesus resurrects Lazarus
from the dead and immediately, and I don't know if I emphasize
this enough, immediately had him unbound and escorted away
from the crowds. It happened in an instant. Here
is His body. Here He is. He's standing at
the entrance of the tomb. And Jesus says, unbind Him and
let Him go. And He was taken out of the presence
of the crowd. No one spoke to Him. No one gathered around Him.
No one gawked at Him. Because the point is not what
Jesus does. It is who Jesus is. Jesus is not about sharing His
glory with Lazarus. Oh, what was it like to be dead?
Did you feel your soul leaving your body? Were you with God? Is Jesus telling the truth? See,
they believed a man that Jesus rose from the dead over the one
who did it. It's human nature. And then we saw the meeting of
the 70. Sanhedrin, they get together
and they decide. They come to a resolution. This
is what we must do for the sake of our nation, for the sake of
God's people. Does that sound familiar in our
day? Be careful, beloved. You know how God's going to make
America great again? Burn it as Babylon. Hallelujah. God will not share
His glory with us as a nation, but He has promised His glory
to us, His elect. There's a big problem. And then they resolve, Jesus
must die. So Caiaphas comes to the table
as the presiding president of the Sanhedrin at this day and
says, you all are dumb as a bag of hammers. Let me show you what
we need to do. Sorry, I didn't mean to make
y'all laugh. You can't be serious when you say that. Maybe y'all need to grow up.
No, I'm playing. Love y'all. We need to kill this guy for
the sake of God and country. for the sake of God and country. And they're concerned about what
Rome will do over and above what God had promised them He would
do. And God has promised and shown throughout the ages that
He has never failed His remnant. He will never fail His elect.
The problem is that we believe in our flesh that elect have
something to do with nationality or something to do with lineage.
or something to do with will, or something to do with obedience,
or something to do with decisions and choices, or bloodline. Being elect has everything to
do and only to do with God's sovereign choice. The counsel
of His secret will, and He does not answer to anyone, and He
does not explain Himself, And He does not have to. And He expresses
this very clearly. He proves that He is the giver
of life against any condition of man. If Jesus can raise a
dead body, He can resurrect a soul. And what they're worried about
at the resurrection of Lazarus now is that people, listen, are
believing in Him. I can't tell you how many years
I have been in church work. I'm just going to put quotes
in the air. Church work. Ministry. Whatever you want to
call it. Been in the employee of the Lord for the sake of His
church. And I can't tell you how many
years I've sat and we've had talks and discussions and meetings. We want revival. We want to see
souls won. We want to do this. We got to
do that. And it's always man's answer. What are we going to
do? I've sat in meetings with large
mega churches, millions of dollars worth of budgets, 100 people
on the payroll and have meetings on how we're
going to grow as a church and what that meant is how many more
families can we bring in to bring the bottom line up $1,000 a year?
So we can do this, we want to do this, we want to do that,
we want to do this, when the scripture shows us very clearly who we
are and what we're to be doing. And one of those conversations,
after we talked about all the cool things we wanted, then we
got spiritual in some of those conversations. Oh, no, no, no,
we got to reach people for the gospel, with the gospel. We got to grow
the church too. We don't want to be a bunch of
infants walking around here having a good time. We also need to
grow deep. We need to go wide and we need to grow deep. No
pun intended there with the man who wrote that. It just sort of came out. And so as we're having these
conversations number of years over, many times over, whether
it be at a local level or regional level, state level, national
level, I've seen it and heard these conversations. Many of
you probably have too. And it always boils down to we
want to reach people for the gospel. And yet none of the times
have we ever truly asked the question, what is the gospel?
But people have adopted contemporary ideas and practices and modes
and all sorts of things and means through which the gospel can
reach other people. Yet the gospel is not even in
the equation of reaching people. So much so that by the early
90s, that people actually now, still this day, believe that
the purpose of the assembly is to draw people who have no desire
to be with the Lord's people into the connection of the Lord's
people to get them in some type of relationship whereby we can
connect them to Jesus. And it's ridiculous. It's sinful. It usurps and blasphemes the
Spirit of God who says through the Scripture, out of the mouth
of Jesus, I will build my church. It's not an issue of style. It's an issue of truth. It's
an issue of truth. You might think, what's all this
got to do? It's got everything to do with it because that's why people
get angry. When the gospel is proven in front of them without
a shadow of a doubt. Jesus, come out Lazarus. He's
alive. Take him away from here. It's
not about him. It's about me. It's about the Father. Here I
am and watch and behold. Unless you believe that I am,
you will die and perish in your sins. And there is no way around
it. They cannot say to the masses
who are split now, some believing, some becoming angry. Those believing
have been born of God, the Holy Spirit. Those who are angry are
not. And they very well may be reprobate,
they cannot. And when we see in our day the
same thing, it's the same attitude. We got to murder the man with
this message. Within our rights, within our
authority, within our judicial powers, within our ecclesiological
powers, we need to get rid of the people who teach this stuff.
We need to stop this. This is wrong. Of course it's
wrong, according to them. They hate the God of Scripture. We must put Him to death for
the sake of the nation. Verse 51, He did not say this
of His own accord, but being high priest that year, He prophesied
that Jesus would die for the nation. And not for the nation
only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are
scattered abroad. Now, see, this is what we understand as he spoke
in a way congruent with his nature and with his desire to get Jesus
out of the way for the sake of ethnic Israel and for their power
and their authority under the suppression of Rome or the oppression
of Rome. But what the Scripture and what
the Gospel writer here is wanting us to understand is that God,
through the words of Caiaphas, also illustrates what He's about
to do through the death of Jesus. They think that they're going
to save their nation by killing Jesus, and it's the other way
around. By refusing the Christ, You actually
die and remain dead. You're actually dead already.
You stay condemned. Jesus says that in John 3. Those who are
not believing are condemned already. And every time we see this contrast
and comparison with those who believe and those who don't believe,
the ones who don't believe are always the highest moral righteousness
of the culture and they are always the elite spiritual people. The ones who are coming to faith
are the lowlifes of society who live like wickedness. Who are hated by the spiritual
elite. And what the spiritual elite
want is them to get in line and look like them. They don't care
if they're converted. Evangelism to most people isn't conversion,
it's saving people out of a way of life. And that's, let me say it again,
it'll be the fourth time today, sinful. The unconverted people are worried
about reputation, are worried about experience, are worried
about ministry, are worried about the population, are worried about
all these things, saying that it's all for the Lord. But converted
people don't worry at all, but their burden is only for the
glory of Christ. And even when we look like fools, Christ is still glorified. Here in this prophecy, there
are elect who are Jews who have been and are being saved. And
then there are elect who are not Jews who have been and are
being saved. This very moment, across this
world, God is regenerating His people after His own will, with
His own pleasure, and granting them the faith to believe in
Jesus Christ as I am. And all across the world, the
powers of darkness are working as children of light, posing,
and in their own minds, believing that they truly are children
of light, and purveying no gospel, and a false gospel, by the will of God's sovereignty. Unbelief worries about an odor
of death. So after this point of Jesus
showing that even a corpse with odor can be made alive through
his power, they resolved to put him to death,
verse 53. Therefore, verse 54, Jesus no
longer walked openly among the Jews. but went from there to
the region near the wilderness to a town called Ephraim. And
he stayed there with his disciples. Now, the Passover, verse 55,
of the Jews was at hand. And many went up from the country
to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They had
to wash and do all these rituals. They were looking for Jesus.
Why? Because word travels fast. And they're saying to one another
as they stood in the temple, what do you think? You don't think you'll come to
the feast at all? I love this text. Because the
very nature of Passover was pointing to Jesus. So there were a group
of people who were looking for Jesus, which is the object of
Passover. And they didn't even know it. There were the group
of people who were looking to get close to Him, to know Him
more, to believe in Him, to hear from Him, to be encouraged by
Him, to see His power. Wonder, here's this man sent
from God, who is He? There were some who were converted
who knew He was Christ. And then there were those who
hated Him and wanted Him to die. They were looking to tattletale
to the Pharisees, just like they did after the resurrection, so
that the chief priests and the temple guard could put their
hands on Him and turn Him over to Rome. So for the first time in history,
the Passover actually had as its undercurrent the true object
of its purpose. But even then, most of them hated
him. The chief priests and the Pharisees
had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should
let them know so they might arrest him. See, imagine that. Imagine
showing up with millions of people coming into the city to worship
God together, to come to a religious festival, and there's guards
everywhere handing out pictures saying, if you see this man,
let us know. If you don't tell us, you're guilty. Let us know. Let us know. Let
us know. Let us know. So people would say, well, there's Some things happening
here where Jesus is trying to hide. He isn't
hiding. He's following the will of God the Father. Six days,
verse 1 of chapter 12, before the Passover, Jesus therefore
came to Bethany. It was just right outside. Where Lazarus was, whom Jesus
has raised from the dead. Now they gave a dinner for him
there. A dinner for who? Jesus. Martha served, and Lazarus was
one of those reclining with him at the table. Now, get this picture. Here is Jesus, and he goes back into Bethany
just a few days before the Passover, and where does he go? To Lazarus'
house. There's a comparison that's about
to start here. A reality of worship that's going
to take place in the heart of Mary that many of us can't grasp. Because we're trying to, like
I started out the sermon this morning, we're trying to see
how do I experience what Mary experienced? What am I going
to do here with this? What is the application? The
application is to just see the power of God on the hearts of
His people. And there are some comparisons
and some contrasts that from the graveside conversations before
the resurrection and those who hate Jesus now going back to
this family and we see even in this household, who would you
think would be the one who would be all over Jesus? Lazarus. That's my thoughts. The man that
gave me life, here I am. But it's not an indicator that
Lazarus wasn't just as grateful. But by the mercy and the purpose
of God, Mary was given the grace to have an affection for Jesus
that had nothing to do with her brother being alive. You see that. I want you to see
that. She wasn't worshipping Jesus for the gift of her brother's
life. She was worshipping Jesus because
she could see the fullness of God's glory. So here, let's point these things
out. 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. And the house was filled with
the fragrance of the perfume. This text doesn't give enough
detail, but God in His perfection has said just enough. Why would she wipe His feet?
What was the deal? Because you sat with your feet
next to food. You needed them clean. I've eaten in Afghan homes and
Muslim homes and there's no tables there. There's a rug on the floor
and that's where they eat. And so you take off your shoes
before you go into the house because you're walking on their
dinner table. And in this day, you walked in
and a slave would wash your feet so that you would not have dirty
feet sitting at the dinner table. That's the significance that
we see in the fact that Jesus, in future sermons, washes the
feet of His disciples, as a slave would wash feet. Mary anoints His feet that had
been washed. That's why He's barefooted there.
And instead of using a towel to wipe his feet off, she uses
her hair to wipe his feet off. Now how subservient is that?
I mean, in all my days of being around large families, every
church we've been a part of, every city we've lived in, there
have always been large families and homeschooled families. They
tend to be a little larger than normal. And I've seen mothers and fathers
clean up messes a billion times. I've seen children pull pictures
off the wall. I've seen curtains fall down
on stages because kids climbing like monkeys on the backside.
I mean, when you grow up and come up in ministry around tens
of thousands of people collectively, you've seen it all. I've seen
it all. I've seen dads wipe snotty noses
with their coat sleeves. I've seen mothers Take a silk
scarf off their head and wipe up a juice spill. That was a
$20 scarf, what are you doing? But I have never in my life,
I've even seen a woman change a dirty diaper with a newspaper.
Because she didn't have a diaper. She had some masking tape and
newspaper and she wrapped it up and left the gathering. She had
to go home and get a diaper. But I've never in my life seen
a woman undo her hair and clean somebody's feet. or wipe up a
stain, or dry something off. Ladies, there's a Mother's Day
message for you. You're a real mother knobbler. Never seen it. I've never heard
of it. And I've even looked this up.
As a matter of fact, Brother Ben and I were talking about
this a couple of weeks ago and it dug me into a rabbit hole of looking
at the traditions of this type of thing. It's just not very
prominent to hear of someone using their hair to wipe up anything. And here's what happens. She
takes this ointment, which you know, it's so funny, I've got
essential oil in my pocket. Isn't that funny? We just got
them everywhere now. I was supposed to give that to my wife this
morning and I just put it in my pocket. I might have a carrot
or something in this one, let's see. We just ordered off the internet.
There it comes, got $35, or if it's frankincense, it might be
$90. Why do we even need this? We got Crisco up there, just
let it thaw. Oil is oil, right? That's what
the men think. Women's like, no, it's not. But this oil was expensive. As a matter of fact, it's been
said that this type of oil would have cost about a year's salary. Now I don't know what all of
you make every year, but whatever it is, after a whole year, it's
a lot of money to you. It's a year. Imagine working
a whole year and at the end of the year, somebody just pours
out your paychecks. That's sort of what was happening
here. She didn't just take the oil, object lesson, and rub it
on Jesus' feet and save the other $80,000 worth for later. She
poured it all out on. She pours it out. And she anoints
His feet with the oil. And you look at verse 4, here's
Judas thinking about the poor. What are you doing? No, no, no,
no, no, we can sell that stuff. I'm wanting to think you probably
got up there and said, hey, can I wash your hair, Mary? And he's
just wringing it out, you know. But Mary thought to herself,
Here is this Jesus. Here is this man who is my God
and my Lord. Here is this man who proved who
He was. He is the resurrection and the
life. Here is this man that if my brother
gets in my way, I'm going to push him down. Here is this man to whom I owe
my life. Here is this God-man who subjected
Himself to be like us that He would give His life as a ransom
for mine. Here is this man who owns all
things. What is it we see in the Scripture
that God owns a cattle on a thousand hills? That all things were made
through Him and by Him. And what does Paul say? For Him. that John would write in his
Apocalypse, that all glory and honor and wealth and worship
forever and ever and ever is worthy, is the Lamb. This is
the small, abbreviated expression of this eternal worship that
you and I will be experiencing for the rest of our eternities
once we are with Christ, finally and certainly. face-to-face,
Mary has a little moment of worshiping Christ in that way in this text. Now let's go back to the grave.
Let's look at Mary. Remember, compare, contrast.
Mary is grieved. These people are with her. She
is in the house grieving. She hears that Jesus has come
through the private message from Martha. The Master is here. He
wants to speak to you privately. She runs out of the house with
a scene. People follow her, trying to mourn with her and to give
her some encouragement. She falls out and exclaims in
public, Had you been here, Lord, He would not have died. Her biggest
problem was that she cared more about the death of her brother
than she did the glory of God. But that's okay. Jesus even says
to them, did I not tell you if you believed you would see the
glory of God? Well, they didn't believe, but God in His pleasure
gave them the glory anyway. Beloved, it is not about what
we do and how strong our faith is that makes God work for us. He grants us the faith to believe
sometimes because He's opened our eyes to see. And He's going
to operate by the counsel of His will to display Himself for
who He is, despite how strong our faith is. And Mary was broken. Then when He goes to the graveside,
He says, open the tomb. Martha pipes up and says what? There is an odor. He's been dead
four days. Concerning with what? Nobody
wants to smell that. Nobody wants to know it's their
loved one that's causing that odor. Nobody wants to disrespect
the dead in that way. It's why they anointed the bodies
with oils to begin with, because after the first few hours a body
starts to smell. And so here is Mary and Martha
in their agony, and in a sense this temporary unbelief, unable
to see the glory of God, they were so grief stricken. But they're
not condemned for it. They're redeemed through it.
They're redeemed in spite of it. And now, sometime later, as he
visits the house again, here is Mary expressing who she really
sees Jesus as. And so she takes this pound. How much oil does it take to
make a pound? It's a lot. It's a lot. And pours it on the
feet of Jesus. And wipes it up with her hair. But this text, the house was
filled with the fragrance of the perfume. It's what I want
to spend the rest of my time on this morning. I just want to paint a picture.
By the way, this is an introduction. We'll exposit this text in the
next weeks. Look at the contrast between
the graveside faith of Mary and the house faith of Mary. Look
at the odor that was permeating the experience of death. It was the odor of the body of
their brother. And Christ overcame it. He took away death. How? Because He raises Himself to
life. Most of all, we need to recognize He's God. He is the
life. He is the resurrection. The aroma,
emotionally, was one of despair, one of brokenness, one of unbelievable
unbelief. These things took place. Why
did our brother die? Why is this happening to us?
What are we going to do? How are we going to make it through?
Where is God in all this? Why wasn't Jesus here? Why couldn't
He have just said the Word and saved him? What in the world
now are we supposed to do with Christ? We can't be mad at Him,
but at the same time, we're a little bitter. Sound familiar? I bet all of us can sing that
song in our hearts. If not right now, we have done
it before. And if we've never done it, young people, you will
sing it one day. But there is hope in the resurrection
of the life who is Jesus Christ because one day all our tears
will be wiped away and we will sing a song of praise forever
and ever and ever having full understanding and full apprehension
of how God is glorified even in the darkest of experiences.
And in that alone will we experience without ceasing the fullness
of the glory of God in a spiritual way. Mary, she did not care about
wealth. She did not care about value.
She did not care about stewardship. She didn't care about her own
family. She didn't care about what they
had to spend to have this. She didn't care about the floor.
She didn't care about her hair. She didn't care about the disciples.
She didn't sit around and make a big to-do about any of this.
She just went to Jesus and she dumps this valuable nard all
over His feet and she cleans it up with the only thing she
had handy, which was her hair. and the aroma filled the house. That's what we're looking for,
isn't it? That's really what we're looking for. We started
this sermon with experiencing the glory of God. What we're
looking for is that experience where all of the aroma of the
joy of the Lord fills our souls. We're wanting to feel that. We
want to put the oil of Jesus in that puffy thing that we use. That blows out mold laden water. And we want to smell it. We want
to experience it. We want to know that everything
is good. Like the real estate agent baking
cookies. Ever been to an open house? They
always bake cookies, except for one cheapskate open house we
went to and they had a cookie oil diffuser. That's what it
is, a diffuser. I'm like, this ain't even right. Well, we're not allowed by law
to run the stove. It makes us feel better. We feel
at home. The spiritual fragrance of Christ
is something we're looking for. We're looking to experience it.
And we think, listen, we think that experiencing the true fragrance
of Christ is when all the other bad smells have left. Let me tell you what odor permeates
when somebody dumps a pound of nard in the house. Nard. What else could be in that house?
Anything. Burnt cookies, dead rabbits,
smelly people that don't bathe. Whatever it might be, when she
poured that out, there was no other smell in that house but
that. It would overcome the presence of anything else. Friends, when
we stay planted, putting our eyes on the glory of God, Jesus
Christ, The aroma of Christ overcomes the stench of all death. There's not a problem, there's
not a person, there's not a predicament, there's not anything in our lives
that Christ will not overcome. But we think that means that
they've been done away with. We think that means that we're
not going to experience them. We think that means. The crazy
thing is, this family had to experience death again and again
and again. Unless I'm mistaken, and there's
a page missing out of my Bible, Lazarus wasn't snatched up into
the heavens in his mortal flesh, so he died again. We're not going to escape the
suffering of this life. But in the midst of it, when
we see and worship the way Mary did, the fullness of the aroma
of Christ fills our soul. How do we get it? We look at
Him. We stay in the simple discipline
of remembering who He is. We stay in the Word. We stay
in the fellowship of the saints. Come into this place, beloved,
when you don't feel good. Not when you're contagious. You know what I mean. Come into
this place when you're broken. Come into this place when you
don't know what you want to do. Come into this place with your
true face on. Don't put a mask on. Because we are the body of
Christ. And we have an affection that
is supernatural and spontaneous, that the world cannot understand.
Because we have the same Spirit within us that raised Christ
from the dead. God has given His Spirit to us. That way we don't have to have
an affinity in any hobby, or interest, or activity, or location,
or income. We don't have to have some kind
of connection relationally outside of the gospel of grace because
we are a people by the glory of God for the purpose, by the
grace of God for the purpose of displaying the fullness of
His glory in Christ Jesus. We have been created by Jesus. We are His workmanship. And when we stay focused on Him,
Together, God's means of grace through and to the church, to
the assembly, is where we are able to really see the aroma
of Christ overcome the stench of life. And it's just like our services. They're fleeting. This gnar dissipated
in the house after a week or so, smelled back to the way it
always did. And Mary, we don't know what
happened to her in life, but we know that she experienced
ups and downs and probably extreme persecution after the resurrection
and the ascension of Jesus. Just like all Christians during
that time. And this very day as Mary stands
in the presence of Christ, she has not a shadow of the aroma
of worship, but she is experiencing it face to face forever. And
one day we will be with her. But this moment, this moment,
you can focus and meditate your mind and meditate your heart,
not on life, but on the life. Not on wishing that you could
resurrect problems and put to death problems and resurrect
solutions, but in the resurrection. What are you going for in your
experience as a Christian? My heart is that my joy would
be full. My heart as a pastor shepherd
is that your joy would be full, that you would see. And even when you weep and even
when you mourn, you do so as those who have hope. And that's
what this little text of Scripture is supposed to show us. There's
a lot of divine things here that we need to recognize. And when
we continue this comparison in the weeks to come, we'll start
to see just the difference between those who have been given a love
for Christ and those who have a love for religion. It's a huge
difference. Because not only do they want
Jesus dead, they want everyone who follows Him dead, and they
want the one that Jesus raised to life to die. They want no
evidence. Listen to this. They want no
evidence or experience of God's sovereignty around them. They
don't want anything but their own self-glory. See how we can't
have both? We can't have both. glory in Christ, or we can live
in death. And by the mercy of God, He has
awakened you because you are His, and Christ has died for
you, beloved. Beloved, the church, you who
profess Christ. I'm not speaking to the world.
I'm talking to you. When we see Judas, let's read
through the end of verse 8. Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples
who was about to betray Him, said, Why was this ointment not
sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor? He said this not because he cared
about the poor, but because he was a thief. He had charge of
the money bag and he used it to help himself to what was put
in it. And Jesus said, Leave her alone, so that she may keep
it for the day of my burial. For the poor you will always
have with you, but you will not always have me." Now just to
put your hearts at ease, that verse does not apply to us. Jesus died on the cross and ascended
to heaven, and His physical ministry in His non-glorified body was
finished. He had done the work of redemption.
So He left, and that's what He's talking about. But He is with
us. His Spirit is in us. The Father
is with us. We are in Him, therefore He is
with us. So the experience of the Christian
life centers on this truth. that we have been baptized into
Christ, we have died with Him, and we have been raised to life
in Him. And so in that, beloved, the
only thing I can leave you with is be encouraged. Paul says,
do not lose heart. Do not pass away. Do not pass
out. Do not faint. Do not be weary.
Do not be downtrodden. Go to 2 Corinthians 4. But we have the treasure of Christ
in jars of clay, the gospel of Christ, to show that the surpassing
power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every
way, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven
to despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are struck down but not destroyed,
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life
of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live
are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that
the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So death is at work in us, but life in you. Since we have the
same spirit of faith, according to what has been written, I believe
and so I spoke, we also believe and we also, so we also speak. Knowing that he who raised the
Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with
you into his presence. For it is all for your sake,
so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase
thanksgiving toward the glory of God, so we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting
away, our inner self is being renewed day by day, for this
light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight
of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things
that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things
that we can see are just passing through, but the things that
are unseen are eternal. That's how you apply this teaching.
You put your heart and mind and focus with God's people as often
as you can on that which is unseen, the ineffable glory of Jesus
Christ our Lord. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for your undying love and your eternal purpose in Christ Jesus.
And I pray that as we continue in our service, Lord, that we
are focusing and just drawing our hearts toward the reality
of the cross, the power of the cross. Lord,
everything else that is ours in Christ, the spiritual blessings,
the experience, the aroma of our worship, the life, the way,
the truth, the resurrection, the bread, the living water,
the God who came down from heaven, the great I Am, Jesus Christ,
our King. With Him as our King, you have
justified us. No one can condemn us. And even
when our hearts condemn us, we have an advocate, Jesus, the
righteousness of God. And in Him alone do we stand. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.