[0:00] Take your Bibles, if you would, and turn with me to Mark chapter 14. I pray to God our young people grew up loving Jesus and believing the song they just sang. I pray every one of us sang that with them, and we believe that same thing.
[0:12] What a wonderful Savior we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Mark chapter 14, we are now, and I've been saying it for days, but we are so close to him dying.
[0:23] This is going to be the sweetest thing anybody does to him right there before he goes to the cross. In just a little while, things are going to turn to pure agony, but in this story today, a lady walks in the room and takes her most expensive gift, breaks it, and pours it out on the head of the Lord.
[0:44] And it is a beautiful picture of, I love you, I believe in you, I honor you, and I worship you. And that's the story that's going on here. But to get the setting, you need to understand that Mark chapter 14 and verse 1 starts off with two different feasts going on.
[1:02] It says, after two days was the feast of the Passover and unleavened bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought out how they might take him by craft and put him to death.
[1:14] And so, just to set the stage, I want you to know this word Passover. That's our time of Easter, basically. It's what Catholic people and Protestant people and Methodist people and so many groups might call Holy Week.
[1:28] But that's because they're basing it on Jesus dying. But in the very beginning of the story, it takes place all the way back in Egypt when God's people were slaves. They've been slaves there for 400 years under the rule of these Egyptians that had become more and more cruel every day.
[1:47] And there's not any kind of pretty picture to slavery. If you can only imagine being a slave, you don't own yourself. You don't own your home. The fact is, when these slaves had a baby, the government just passed a rule.
[2:00] Let's just go kill all the boy babies. When a boy baby is born, kill the boy baby. That means it's a pretty rough place to live. And now Moses had shown up. Moses is the famous prophet of the Old Testament.
[2:14] He writes the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They're called the books of Moses, the books of law, the Pentateuch. And Moses shows up, sent by God to be the leader and the deliverer, and like a picture of Jesus Christ, and to get them out of Egypt and into freedom.
[2:33] And there's going to be ten plagues worked on the nation of Egypt. Ten times God is going to make a frontal assault, an attack on all the demon gods that these Egyptians work, and he is going to defeat them, every one.
[2:49] The last one will be the one where all the firstborn will die. Firstborn animals, firstborn children, firstborn are going to die all across the country.
[3:01] And God, in the place of that, says, I will allow you to have a substitute. That's extremely important if you want to understand anything about salvation. God's setting a picture to get you ready to understand what happens when you get saved.
[3:16] So what he said was, all the firstborn in this whole country will die. But if you believe me, I will give you a lamb. And that lamb you will keep in your house a number of days.
[3:29] You'll treat that lamb a certain way. That lamb will be a certain kind of lamb, a firstborn lamb, a lamb without blemish, a male lamb. And you'll have that lamb ready. And at the right time, you will kill that lamb.
[3:40] And when you kill that lamb, you will take its blood, and you'll put it on the post of your door and on the lintel, the part that goes across the top, so that your whole door is covered in blood.
[3:51] And that will mean that the lamb has died. And then I will send the death angel. And the death angel will make a march across the city, a march across the country.
[4:03] If you can imagine Cairo, a march across Cairo. Now, most of you have never really lived in a city, and especially not a city like that. Most of you, we live, you know, you might call us city folks because we don't live in the country, but we have air conditioning, so you don't really hear your neighbors.
[4:22] And we live far apart, so you don't hear them because it's a few feet to a few yards to your neighbor's house. And when you live in a place like Peru, your houses literally touch.
[4:34] And even though you live in a well-to-do home, it's like living in an apartment. I lived in a very nice, several-bedroom, several-bathroom house. When my neighbor slid his chair to the table for breakfast, I knew it.
[4:48] Because when he slid it across that concrete floor that had metal running through it, that bumped the metal in my house and the concrete in my house, I knew it. Fighting with your wife brings special challenges.
[5:00] When you live so close and you say, ah! And she's back on the door. That is pretty bad, eh, man?
[5:13] I mean, it's probably a pretty good deal, though, because, I mean, I want to kill her. I try to do it silently. Killing you softly, that's what I was doing. I don't know what that means. I just heard that somewhere. So I just want you to imagine this great big city of Cairo.
[5:29] And I want you to imagine all the windows open. And I want you to imagine all the families in there. And everybody loves their kid. And the angel starts his march across the city.
[5:41] And at every house he stops. And a baby dies. A young man dies. A 17-year-old boy dies. And mom and dad walk in. And they're screaming and weeping and wailing as the baby died.
[5:53] And then the next baby died. And it's like a wave of screams and horror and destruction. And as the death angel gets close to Israel's place in the country as slaves, he sees the blood and he passes over.
[6:07] And they don't cry. But they hear everybody else's screams. I don't know if you've ever been to a funeral. That's not so sanitized like they are in America.
[6:20] As a pastor and as a missionary, I've been in funerals where I've seen them reach into the casket and grab the cadaver and hug the cadaver and start pulling it out. And the funeral undertakers are running to get them and push the body back in before it gets embarrassingly terrible.
[6:37] I've seen them crying over the body. I've seen them yelling as the body gets placed in the niche in Peru or in the ground here. I've watched people faint. I've watched people scream and yell and wail like you'd never believe.
[6:51] It's blood curdling as they scream. And the whole city of Cairo sounds like that tonight. But in the Passover, Jewish families are like, our children are fine.
[7:05] There's joy. There's peace. There's happiness. In the middle of the greatest chaos you can ever imagine, in the middle of everybody losing their oldest child, Jews were protected.
[7:19] Well, you know the story. The next day, Pharaoh was mad as he could be. And he said, you guys get out of here and leave my country, which is exactly what God wanted. And so God said to them, don't you ever forget.
[7:33] Don't you ever forget I saved your firstborn. Don't you ever forget that everybody else lost their child. Don't you ever forget it.
[7:44] And so every year, at that time of year, they'd have a celebration. And at that celebration, they would celebrate. They would remember when God passed over and didn't kill because of the blood.
[8:01] It was the blood. It was the blood of an innocent lamb who didn't deserve to die. It was the blood of a sweet little lamb that had lived in your house for several hours, days of hours there.
[8:15] And you had gotten to know, and that lamb had died so your child could live. And they celebrated that. And so it was time to celebrate it.
[8:26] And what's going to coincide with that is that Jesus will soon die. And that picture from all the way back in the Old Testament of a lamb dying was a picture of Jesus dying.
[8:42] See, when John the Baptist saw him in John chapter 1 and verse 29, as Jesus crosses the hill to come down to the river of Jordan to be baptized, John points up and says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
[9:00] And so in the story setting where we are, it's time to celebrate the Passover. That's the next thing they'll do. But before they celebrate the Passover, and Jesus is there with his disciples, there has to be somewhat of a heaviness in the room.
[9:17] Because in the room, Jesus knows he's about to die. The disciples notice that he's calmer, quieter than he has been. They've heard him thinking about this and praying about it.
[9:31] He's been warning them that he is going to die, he is going to be buried, and he'll rise again. He has told them the temple will be destroyed and built back again. He has told them that in the future, I'll be coming back for you.
[9:44] He has told them what's going to happen to them. And they're in the room. And all of a sudden, in walks this lady. The story is told in different parts of the Bible. We're only going to look at it in this one.
[9:56] But she walks in and she brings this bottle of perfume. It's from India. It's a special blend of spices from India. It's exotic. It's in a special box.
[10:08] Very likely something for her wedding. But regardless, it's so expensive that it's, I don't know, a $20,000 or $30,000 little box of ointment because it's worth a minimum, it's worth at least a regular wage for 300 days a year's pay.
[10:25] She walks in the room, walks over to Jesus, and breaks open this ointment and pours it on his head. But the second she does, you've got these cold, calculating, religious, good people that walk with Jesus.
[10:42] Disciples are going, what in the world? We could have bought some new chairs for the church. We could have paid the electric bill. We could have given that money to the poor.
[10:55] We know from other parts of the Bible that Judas was the ringleader in the running of his mouth. And he was the treasurer. And he liked to steal out of the treasury. And so, I mean, he just lost a good cut on what that was worth. And Jesus looked and said, hey, listen, guys, she's done a good thing.
[11:11] She's done a good thing. And then he says, she's come to anoint my body for the burying. That's got to be heavy.
[11:23] I told you I was going to die. And now she's here. And she's poured the oil on me. Because they didn't have all the fancy caretaking stuff we do. Where they took and embalmed them like we embalmed.
[11:35] But they always wrapped the body in these claws. And they always poured all kinds of perfume and incense and stuff on the body to make it not. We all want to make death as sanitized as we can.
[11:47] I mean, we don't want to see death in its ugly reality. We don't want to think about it. We're all going to die. So we fix places where we can get the body sent off real quick.
[12:00] And we fix places that will make the body look like she's alive. I've never thought that. But I always hear people say, looks just like them. And I'm always like, no, not really. I know I'm a country boy.
[12:11] But as a country boy, I can just tell you, you city folks might think that looks like her. No, not really. It looks like she ain't home. And we want it fixed.
[12:23] But you can't fix death. It's going to happen. We're all going to die. The strongest in this room will become the weakest one day. And you will die.
[12:34] And there's only one solution. And that is that Passover. That Passover that Jesus would take your sin debt. That Jesus would become your substitute. And that you could know that your sins were forgiven.
[12:47] That story is found in Exodus 12, by the way, if you want to check it out. But here's the big truth of the Passover before we get to the real meat of this message. And here's the real meat of this message. Substitute.
[12:59] You ought to write that word down. We call it the substitutionary atonement. You see, the wages of sin is death. So if you have sinned, you will die.
[13:12] And you will pay the price of your sin. Or someone else will take your sin and pay your debt. The wages of sin is death.
[13:24] But the gift of God is eternal life. And so the God of heaven said, I love you. And I don't want you to die and go to hell. And I don't want you to experience the torment of sin.
[13:36] I want you to be saved. And I have a plan. I will die in your place. So God became man. And God dwelt among us.
[13:47] Lived among us. And died on a cross. And died a sinner's death when he didn't have to. So you could be saved. And he will take your sin on him. So that you could be saved. He becomes your substitute.
[13:59] It's a picture of your salvation. Jesus is preparing at those moments in chapter 14 to become that substitute for the entire world. Here's what's funny.
[14:11] Look, if you would, at chapter 14 and verse 1 and underline this. They're there to take him by craft and put him to death. In other words, they are plotting his death.
[14:22] They're thinking, we got to kill him. We hate him. He's been stealing our business. He went in a temple and threw out the money changers. We were like taking a mafia cut of all that was going on there.
[14:33] We don't like him. He is telling other people we're not doing good. He's blowing up everything about us. I don't like it. We got to get rid of him. What they didn't know was he came to die.
[14:45] He knows he's about to die. He knows he's about to die. This story, he's going to remind them he's about to die. He's been telling people he's going to die. You need to understand they didn't have to take him by craft.
[14:57] He was ready to die. But I want you to see the picture of love, if you would. Go with me to chapter 14, verse 3. Now, before I go too far, I've got to get you to outline whose house they're staying in.
[15:21] Would you underline Simon the leper? Now, you can't stay at a leper's house. You can't stay at a leper's house. Lepers can't have houses.
[15:33] Lepers live outside the city in these houses they build for them because they're quarantined and they're unclean. Their wife can't be with them.
[15:43] Their children can't be with them. No one can be with them. And if they even walk down the street, they have to cover their mouth and they have to holler, unclean, unclean, leper, unclean, stay away because touching them might get you sick.
[15:58] But this guy's with Jesus. Can I give you a hint? He's Simon that used to be leper. He's like Rahab the harlot. You see, when you say Rahab the harlot, that's like Rahab the prostitute.
[16:11] But Rahab the prostitute is no longer a prostitute. She meant Jesus. And Rahab the harlot becomes Rahab the pure lady because that's what the blood of Jesus does. Say amen right there. And he's in the house of Simon the leper.
[16:23] And everybody in town knows Simon used to be a leper, but he met Jesus and Simon's not a leper anymore. And they're in a place called Bethany. And can't you imagine old Simon sitting over thinking, if it weren't for you, I'd still be outside.
[16:36] If it weren't for you, I'd still be an outcast. If it weren't for you, I couldn't enjoy my family. If it weren't for you, my life would still be a disaster. But you're in my house. Come on in. Jesus, welcome.
[16:46] Welcome. It's a place of worship because old Simon's thankful. Are you thankful? By the way, you used to be a leper. Whether you realize it or not, you were unclean. Whether you realize it or not, you were on your way to hell.
[16:58] Whether or not you realize that you were condemned and on your way to hell. And the God of heaven saved you. So when you come to church, it ought to be like when those girls were singing or when the choir was singing. You ought to be thinking, glory to God, that's me.
[17:10] Jesus saved me. Jesus made me different. That's just extra. That's not the story. It's just a casual mention here. They're in the house of Simon the leper. I don't know what happened.
[17:22] Don't know all the story. But somehow Simon must have met Jesus. Simon must have got healed. Simon must have got saved. And Simon moved back home. Kind of like a crazy guy that was full of demons.
[17:35] And after he met Jesus, he was clothed and seated in his right mind. And can't you imagine when he got home and his wife and family saw him? Simon's back home. Now, there are people in town that want Jesus dead.
[17:46] They're plotting his death. But this one's wanting to figure out a way to express her love. And she gives him extravagant love. She gives him extravagant love.
[17:58] I want you to go back up in verse 3 and I want you to underline this. There's a woman. She has an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard. And you put a circle around very precious because we don't talk like that.
[18:10] That's not the way we say it anymore. So maybe you make a note to the margin, very expensive. See, when something's precious, that means there's not a lot of it. And when there's not a lot of it, it becomes expensive.
[18:24] I read just the other day, they think they found so many millions of pounds of diamonds. And I thought to myself, that would be terrible if they find all them diamonds. Everybody's diamonds are going to be worthless. Because the only thing that makes a diamond worth something is because there ain't many of them.
[18:37] That's why you wear a little old bitty one and say, that ain't pretty. It's expensive. You don't do that with a pebble you pick up out of the driveway. Can't you imagine some guy picking up a rock out of the driveway and making a ring and saying, this is a ring I'm getting married to you with?
[18:50] She'd say, no, no, no, I need something precious. Well, it might not be too precious. But there's not much of this ointment. There's not much of this spikenard. And it's very expensive.
[19:00] In fact, Mark is quick to tell us it costs 300 pence. And you can go down two verses and around that word pence. That's daily wages. 300 days of full pay.
[19:12] That's what it costs. The ointment costs a year's salary. It's been imported from India. What she does is reckless. People are going to mock her for her excess.
[19:23] I mean, when you have a special guest in a Jewish home in that day and time, you might very likely take some special oil and anoint them to give them a sweet smell, to show them that you're giving them a little dot of precious on them.
[19:41] But she comes in with the whole jar. I cannot believe what ladies' perfume costs. But I have yet to meet most of you who would spend a year's salary on a bottle of oil.
[19:54] And by the way, when you do buy, you know, I like to buy it on Amazon and try to get the cheapest price I can. I don't want to go to the fancy store. I'm trying to get the cheapest price I can. And that stuff's so expensive.
[20:05] But this is like expensive. And if I walked in the room and Betty just took the jar and went, I'd be like, that's a lot of oil for one day, woman. Say, man.
[20:18] Everybody in the room's got to be going, what's she doing? It was even a custom in many Jewish homes when a guest was a very special guest, you'd even break the glass he drank with because no one else should ever be able to drink with that glass that this special guest had drunk with.
[20:33] So it's a big honor. But she's extravagant. She's over the top. She's ridiculous. The people in the room are even mocking her and they're laughing at her. She's got to even wonder, how's Jesus going to act when I come in and I just take the most expensive, precious thing I have and I pour it on him?
[20:51] What's he going to say? What was it costing her? What she did, though, Jesus said, was sweet and beautiful. Look, if you would, it was 6, 14, 6.
[21:02] And Jesus said, let her alone. Why are y'all bothering her? She's wrought a good work on me. What she did is good. You know, you can't be too sweet on loving Jesus.
[21:16] You can't be too sweet on loving Jesus. In fact, you need to just go ahead and, you know, when you're really in love, you stop thinking about money. You start thinking about saying, how can I scream I'm in love with you?
[21:28] When Betty and I had been married 30 years, like 15 years ago, I was like sitting around talking to the guys.
[21:38] I said, what do you do for your wife on your 30th wedding anniversary? And so I think it was Mark Coffey said to me, why don't you give her a rose? A rose?
[21:49] He said, one for every year you've been married. That's 30 roses. He said, how about one for every month? Ooh, that's thinking 360 roses. So we went down to the rose store, and I walked in, and I said, I'd like to see you make me a bundle of roses.
[22:05] He said, oh, no problem, no problem. I said, I need 360 roses. They said, 360 roses? I said, yeah, all of them in one bundle. They said, we couldn't even get that in a car, and you can't carry it in a truck, it'll all mess it up.
[22:17] They said, we'll have to walk it to your house. I said, walk on. They come walking into our house. It wouldn't hardly go through the door. They come in, 360 roses, and I called Betty, and I said, I got a rose for you.
[22:31] They're trying to be, what am I going to do on our 50th anniversary? It's going to be a lot of roses, and in Peru, they were cheap. Jesus didn't get upset.
[22:42] Jesus didn't get upset. Jesus loved her loving him. I think she saw more in him than others saw.
[22:54] See, in verse 8, he said, she has done what she could. She come beforehand to anoint my body to the bearing. I don't know about this lady.
[23:05] You think possibly she sat over to the side, listened to all the story going on, and hearing Jesus talk, and everybody else is like, anytime you talk about something people don't want to talk about, they kind of change subjects real quickly.
[23:16] You know, Jesus says, I'm about to go die, and everybody's like, did you see that soccer game? And Jesus said, they're going to kill me. And they said, yeah, Croatia lost.
[23:28] And Jesus is like, yeah, I was going to tell you I was going to die. And I wonder if that lady's sitting over going. I don't know. Did she know? But her gift spoke of her commitment to him.
[23:41] She didn't hold anything back. She didn't say, I'll give him a little bit today, and I'll give him a little bit tomorrow. She brought everything she had. Her gift spoke of his value to her. He was worth so much, she'd give everything.
[23:53] Her gift said that Jesus is worth more than her reputation. Her gift said she loved Jesus more than she loved anything she owned. Her gift said he was worthy to be worshipped. Is that what kind of worship we're doing here?
[24:06] Is that what kind of worship we're doing here? It was a sacrificial gift because it's gone. It's gone. You didn't give him a drop.
[24:17] You broke the bottle. You poured it all out. You don't get to go home with any of it. It was broken and poured out.
[24:27] This is very likely the last kind act that will happen to Jesus before he dies. Loving one who would love Simon the leper, that's pretty easy to love, though, isn't it?
[24:40] I mean, if you just think about the room they're in, everybody else would have thrown Simon out, not Jesus. He doesn't throw you out. You came here today, you're not saved. He doesn't throw you out. He loves the outcasts.
[24:50] He loved healing them. He loved giving them his life back. I want you to go to chapter 14, verse 4. I got five minutes, and I finished two points out of seven. So you're either going to hang on quick or I'm going to go long. Here you go. Ready? The gift caused a question of priorities.
[25:04] In chapter 14, verse 4, it says, There was some that had indignation within themselves and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? It could have been sold for 300 pence and given to the poor, and they murmured.
[25:16] See, they saw her love as a waste. Having money and keeping it, that's the goal of the world. I mean, honestly, we don't mind giving away a little bit as long as we get to keep most of it.
[25:28] We don't mind giving even, maybe we'll even tithe, but we get to do what we want with 90%. But that's not how she looked at it. She said, I'll just give it all. Having money, that's power. Foolishly losing and giving away money, well, that's just foolish.
[25:43] But she was foolish. They felt like the poor could have benefited more. And Jesus said, What you guys need to realize, there's some priorities here. There's poor people you have with you always, and then there's me.
[25:56] Look, if you would, at verse 7. You have the poor with you always. And whensoever you will, you may do good to them. But you don't have me all the time. So many times it's a question of priorities.
[26:09] What do you really think is most important? And here's the question that you all need to face. It's really not your family, and it's really not your job, and it's really not your health, and it's really not your education, and it's really not your retirement.
[26:22] It's Jesus. You must know Him. It'll always seem crazy that you love Jesus so much with so much time, so much money, and so much of what the world calls waste.
[26:34] When Jesus becomes your priority, it irritates people. When Jesus becomes your priority, it irritates people. But there had been a purpose through a gift. Look at chapter 14 and verse 8.
[26:46] There was a purpose. She hath done what she could. She has come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Whether she knew it or not, God did.
[26:58] Jesus was about to die, be buried, and she was preparing His body. And so Jesus uses it as a teaching moment. Her love showed through and met a need.
[27:08] She had done a good thing. She had wrought a good work. You know, Jesus is reminding them one more time, Guys, I told you He was coming to Jerusalem, and I told you I was going to die.
[27:23] And so let me just get something real quick. She just poured the stuff on me because you're going to be burying me real soon. It will not be but a couple of days before they bury Jesus.
[27:37] I just love this part right here. The power that's promised. Look at verse 9. 14, 9. Verily I say unto you, whether so this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also she had done shall be spoken of for a memorial.
[27:51] I wish you'd circle the word gospel. Circle the word gospel. See, the word gospel, that's good news. The word gospel is salvation to undeserving people.
[28:02] The word gospel is you, Simon the leper, you, Rahab the harlot, you, Austin the wicked sinner, can be saved by what Jesus did on the cross of Calvary.
[28:13] That's gospel. And Jesus says, you know what's happening, guys? I'm telling you a story. She just did that. But get this. The gospel is going to be preached. People are going to know there's hope.
[28:24] There's no hope in this world. Man, a politician, every politician tries to make you think he's the solution, no hope. The gospel would be preached. So Jesus knew he had the victory before he ever went in the grave.
[28:37] He knew he was going to die, but he knew he wouldn't stay dead. He said this gospel will be preached. Would you underline it in the whole world? Do you underline that? That's a missionary verse.
[28:49] He said it's going to be preached. He said, let me tell you something. I'm going to die. She just prepared my body. And what's happening right now, we'll be preached in the whole world. Everybody's going to know that God came in human flesh, that God died on a cross, that God rose from the grave, and that God saves lost people.
[29:07] We're part of that story. Jesus died for us. We're part of that story. We're saved this morning. If you're saved this morning, that's the gospel that was preached. And we get to share that good news.
[29:20] And then he threw this in. And every time y'all tell the story, y'all just remember to tell the story about the lady who thought enough about me to anoint my body. Chapter 14, verse 3.
[29:32] Real love and service has a price. It was an alabaster box of ointment, of spikenard, and she broke the box. A year's salary.
[29:46] When's the last time you did something for the Lord that really cost you? That really cost you? Now, Americans are generous people.
[29:57] You let something happen bad around the world, we'll shut the internet down giving money to it. But we don't give what costs us. We don't mind throwing $5 at it or $100 at it.
[30:09] We don't even mind throwing $1,000 at it, but not the most precious thing we have in our house. Giving our children to be missionaries, maybe. Giving our lives to be missionaries, maybe.
[30:20] Giving up what's precious to us. When did you lay your pride aside and really worship? We actually worship. I have a problem with this. I don't like to express my emotions in public.
[30:33] It embarrasses me. I don't like to cry in public because it embarrasses me. I don't like to get overly emotional because it embarrasses me. And so you come to church and you talk about this great God and you sit there stoic and stone-faced.
[30:47] Well, I love him, but I wouldn't want nobody to know it. Say amen. That didn't want to happen in this story. In this story, she walked in the room and everybody in the room was watching.
[30:59] And she said before she got there, I'm going to anoint him today. I don't care what people think. I'm going to get so happy and I'm going to be so in love. And Peter can laugh at me and Judas can laugh at me and everybody else in the room can think I'm trying to show off.
[31:13] But I'm in love with Jesus and here I come. And she broke that bottle. When's the last time? Others will not understand your extravagance. They will condemn you and accuse you.
[31:24] They do that because they feel guilty because they don't express love. When did you serve without thinking about yourself? When did you just forget you and forget what others thought and forget the opinions and step out in love and just risk it all for Jesus?
[31:41] When did you serve or give without expecting anything from anyone? Or does your love have to fit a budget and a schedule? Let me see, God.
[31:52] I think I can schedule you in. Let me give you five minutes. Hold on, God. Let me get my wallet out and consider what I can do for you. How do we put this in practice?
[32:05] Decide now to trust Jesus as the only payment for your sin. If you're here and you're not saved, there is only one who can save you. There's only one who can give you new life. There's only one. He loved you enough that he gave his life willingly.
[32:19] You'll find it hard to believe that anyone can love you like Jesus loves you. By the way, I think being married to me for my wife is like I'm the stoic, stone-faced.
[32:34] You know, she's loving and hugging everybody. I got to get a kiss before I leave, a kiss when I come home. She tells me a hundred times a day, and I'm like, yeah, me too.
[32:47] Love you. I try to be romantic about it, but I don't gush over her because I just don't gush. But this lady did. To really be used of God, you got to give him all that's really valuable to you.
[33:07] You got to take that box of warment, be ready to break it. You got to be broken and poured out. I don't mind my kids going to youth camp, but not to Missionville.
[33:27] I don't mind my kid going forward in the invitation, but I don't want to be a preacher. Good night. Don't pay him enough. I know we don't pay ours enough. That's the way we always think. Y'all do pay me enough.
[33:38] I used to tell them in Peru all the time. I said, you don't want a preacher to be a, you don't want your son to be a pastor because you know you don't pay him. Well, pay him. You wouldn't be so embarrassed about it, but you don't want that. Come on, let's be honest. Come on, let's be honest.
[33:52] We don't go to the altar because, well, we don't want people to think we're bowing. We don't sing with all of our heart unless we're drunk at a karaoke bar.
[34:05] Sometimes for Jesus, no, no, no, no singing. We're holding back. We're holding back. We're holding back. We're holding back.
[34:15] But time to stop protecting ourselves and yield it all to him. Time to get our priorities right. Time to understand this story.
[34:28] Where's your alabaster box? Where's your ointment? Can't make it to church in the midweek.
[34:38] Can't make it on Sunday night. Can't have family devotions. Can't have time to read your Bible. Can't give. Can't witness. Because you're protecting your box.
[34:53] You're protecting your box. Maybe your box is your retirement. Maybe your box is your pride. Maybe your box is your desires.
[35:06] But isn't it time to break it and pour it out on Jesus?