WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.879 I'll invite Miriam Montgomery to come and read for us from Mark 14. 00:00:05.759 --> 00:00:10.160 It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:15.679 and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him, 00:00:15.679 --> 00:00:19.760 for they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people. 00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:26.240 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, 00:00:26.239 --> 00:00:32.320 a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:37.439 and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves 00:00:37.439 --> 00:00:43.039 indignantly, why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold 00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:49.759 for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they scolded her, but Jesus said, 00:00:49.759 --> 00:00:56.719 leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have 00:00:56.719 --> 00:01:02.079 the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them, but you will not always have me. 00:01:02.879 --> 00:01:09.599 She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly I say to you, 00:01:09.599 --> 00:01:15.200 wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. 00:01:15.200 --> 00:01:21.680 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. 00:01:22.320 --> 00:01:25.840 And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money, 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:33.200 and he sought an opportunity to betray him. We're working our way through Mark's gospel, 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:39.439 and we will take it all the way up to Easter Sunday. And here we are in the very last week of Jesus' 00:01:39.439 --> 00:01:47.920 life. It's Wednesday. He's going to be crucified on Friday, and it's just two days before the 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:54.640 Passover, one day before the Passover feast takes place on Thursday night. And this passage is all 00:01:54.640 --> 00:02:02.239 about, I think, what it means to find closeness to God and intimacy ultimately with God. So 00:02:02.239 --> 00:02:11.599 do you find that in your life you long to be close to God? And I think that in my time in ministry, 00:02:11.599 --> 00:02:17.120 which has not been that long, but as I've met with people and meet with a decent amount of people now 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:23.759 who aren't Christians, who are searching and exploring Christianity, one of the things that 00:02:23.759 --> 00:02:30.879 usually comes out is despite what people believe intellectually, and despite what we think, the 00:02:30.879 --> 00:02:38.319 way the life of our minds work, every single human being deep down really just wants to be close to 00:02:38.319 --> 00:02:45.280 God, just wants to be known by God and know God, wants to be loved by God and love God. That's 00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:50.400 really the biggest problem we face in life, and that's really what we want deep down is to have a 00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:55.199 closeness with the God who made us. I think every person feels that, every person experiences that, 00:02:55.840 --> 00:02:59.599 and even Bertrand Russell, the great atheist of the early 20th century, 00:02:59.599 --> 00:03:04.960 he said that he didn't believe that he was an atheist, but yet he longed for it, he talked 00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:10.079 about it, he said, I longed for it. I wish that God would have come closer to me, he talked about 00:03:10.079 --> 00:03:14.159 that. I think everybody feels that, everybody wants that, and in this passage we learn that God 00:03:14.159 --> 00:03:21.280 actually has done that. He's come close, he's drawn near, he's taken the first step, and one of the 00:03:21.280 --> 00:03:27.199 categories that we see here is that what Mark is trying to teach us in Mark 14 and across the whole 00:03:27.199 --> 00:03:32.479 gospel is that Jesus became a little bitty baby because he wanted to get close to you, 00:03:33.839 --> 00:03:39.599 and that he took the first step, and that the way you can find closeness and intimacy with him, 00:03:39.599 --> 00:03:45.839 with God, is to actually look and see that it all starts with intimacy and closeness with Jesus 00:03:45.839 --> 00:03:50.479 himself, that those two things are so tied together. If you want to find closeness with God, 00:03:50.479 --> 00:03:57.280 Christianity claims you've got to come and find Jesus, you've got to see the value, the preciousness, 00:03:57.280 --> 00:04:03.439 the worth of Jesus in particular, that Jesus is the answer of God saying, I want to get close to 00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:09.759 you, look at Jesus, see his value, give him worship, that's the answer that Mark's gospel gives us, 00:04:09.759 --> 00:04:16.480 so it ties those two things, closeness to God, the preciousness and uniqueness of Jesus, 00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:22.160 right together, and says, really, that's the same thing. Now, that is exactly the example of this 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:29.759 woman that we just read about, so this woman who has no name in this passage, she comes to Jesus 00:04:29.759 --> 00:04:38.240 at this feast and she takes a bottle of spiked nard oil, that's the Greek goes out of its way 00:04:38.240 --> 00:04:43.840 to tell us exactly what it is, it's spiked nard oil, spiked nard oil comes from northern India, 00:04:43.839 --> 00:04:48.560 it's the only place you can get it, and that means in the first century it's extremely precious, 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:54.879 and we're told in the passage that to get some, you need about a year's wage from a middle-class 00:04:54.879 --> 00:05:00.959 labor, 300 shuckles of silver, which is about a whole year's worth of money, and so this is an 00:05:00.959 --> 00:05:08.479 incredibly precious item, very expensive, she probably inherited it in her family, it seems 00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:14.080 unlikely that she could have purchased it, and what she does is she breaks the neck of the bottle, 00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:19.280 so the bottle had a long spout on it, some people would even wear them around their necks like 00:05:19.280 --> 00:05:27.040 necklaces, and it was because you were trying to give off even through the clay jar an aroma of 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:32.080 fragrance to make you smell better than you actually did, this is the first century, everybody 00:05:32.080 --> 00:05:38.080 smells bad, right, everybody does, they don't have the things we have today, no sanitation and sewage, 00:05:38.079 --> 00:05:45.039 no deodorants of any kind, everybody smells, and you would wash people's feet, and you would do all 00:05:45.039 --> 00:05:51.360 sorts of things to get the smells away, and people would literally wear oils around their necks 00:05:52.079 --> 00:05:59.360 as a way of saying, I smell better than, I smell around you better than I actually do in real life, 00:05:59.360 --> 00:06:04.799 she might have done that, and so for that reason they sealed the caps, this was actually a completely 00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:13.280 sealed jar, and she breaks the neck of it, meaning that this gift is total, once you break it, it's 00:06:13.280 --> 00:06:18.800 done, you have to use it, and she pours it over his head, what was she doing, why did she do it, 00:06:18.800 --> 00:06:26.480 and I think this, she was saying in her heart to him, I'm placing the most precious thing I have 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:33.120 on the most precious person I know of, I'm giving the most valuable thing in all the world to the 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:40.240 most valuable person, and you see, she saw it, she saw that closeness with God means seeing the value, 00:06:40.240 --> 00:06:45.120 the preciousness of Jesus Christ, she put that together, she was seeking intimacy with Jesus 00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:50.319 Christ, and therefore closeness to God, that's the only, what Christianity says is that's the only 00:06:50.319 --> 00:06:54.720 way to get it, you want to be close to God, you want to draw near, you've got to see the value, 00:06:54.720 --> 00:06:59.840 the preciousness, you've got to be willing to pour what is most precious in your life onto Christ, 00:06:59.839 --> 00:07:05.599 and so let's see that in two ways this morning, first, exactly what I said, if you want to get 00:07:05.599 --> 00:07:12.560 close to God, first you've got to see the value of Jesus, and then secondly, the need for his 00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:18.239 anointment, okay, so let's think about that, first, if you want to get close to God this morning, 00:07:19.439 --> 00:07:26.079 see the value of Jesus Christ, now Jesus Christ's value is immeasurable, we can't today in the next 00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:32.079 25 minutes get through all the way as Jesus is valuable and precious, but let me just give you 00:07:32.079 --> 00:07:38.800 two that I think come right up from the passage, two ways that he's valuable, the first is subtle, 00:07:40.079 --> 00:07:48.479 but one of the real heartbeats of Mark 14 is that God has come to get close to us and he's 00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:55.920 taken that step, that's the first thing to see, that in Jesus, God has taken a step towards you, 00:07:55.920 --> 00:08:02.160 the step towards you, and that is why Jesus is so precious, is so valuable, this is God, Jesus is 00:08:02.160 --> 00:08:09.040 God coming to you, coming towards you, now here's how that works in this passage, they are, we're 00:08:09.040 --> 00:08:17.040 told at the beginning in Bethany verse 3, and they are at the house of Simon the leper, and a woman 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:24.400 comes to pour this oil on Jesus, if you back up just verse 1 and 2 you'll see that this is in the 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:31.360 context of the fact that the scribes, the Pharisees were trying to figure out a way to kill Jesus 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:37.840 quietly, so it says in verse 1 and 2, they were seeking to stealthily capture him and murder him, 00:08:38.480 --> 00:08:43.840 why? and then it tells us because they knew that if they didn't do it quietly there would be an 00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:50.240 uproar from the crowd, now that means that this is Wednesday, on Friday remember they're going to 00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:57.200 all shout crucify him, but on Wednesday the Pharisees and the scribes and the high priest, 00:08:57.200 --> 00:09:02.879 they are afraid that if they try to arrest Jesus there's going to be a riot, he is still 00:09:02.879 --> 00:09:08.000 incredibly beloved, he's still incredibly popular, you remember the triumphal entry, 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:14.240 he was so popular and so loved, Wednesday he is still so popular and so loved, and so they know 00:09:14.240 --> 00:09:20.799 if we try to get rid of him today there's going to be a huge issue, now Mark is highlighting 00:09:20.799 --> 00:09:26.159 something exactly what happened here in the story, and that's that in some sense it doesn't make sense 00:09:26.159 --> 00:09:32.559 what Jesus does, we're told that Jesus goes to Bethany on the evening before the Passover feast, 00:09:32.559 --> 00:09:40.079 and Bethany is outside the city, it's two miles away, when you come to a city and you are the talk 00:09:40.079 --> 00:09:44.399 of the town, you know when you come to the city and people are laying down palm branches, 00:09:44.879 --> 00:09:50.879 celebrating your entry, you can go feast at any house you want to feast at, you can go sit at 00:09:50.879 --> 00:09:56.639 any table, you can be a lodger at anybody's home, right, Jesus was so popular he could have gone 00:09:56.639 --> 00:10:03.519 anywhere, and yet what we see in this passage is he actually leaves, he gets outside, and one of the 00:10:03.519 --> 00:10:09.679 things that the commentators talk about is how across Mark's gospel there's a real motif that 00:10:09.679 --> 00:10:15.360 every time you expect Jesus to become an insider he becomes an outsider, and every time you expect 00:10:15.360 --> 00:10:20.879 him to go towards the insiders of the day he chooses the outsiders, so it's called the insider- 00:10:20.879 --> 00:10:25.519 outsider motif in the Gospel of Mark, and you can find it in the commentaries, they talk about it 00:10:25.519 --> 00:10:29.279 they talk about it all the time, and here it is, you expect him to be in the city, he goes outside 00:10:29.279 --> 00:10:34.639 the city, he goes to Bethany two miles away, and then when he gets there he's with, he's at the 00:10:34.639 --> 00:10:40.559 house of Simon a leper, there's nothing more outside you can do, there's nothing farther away 00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:45.679 from being on the inside than to go eat at the home of a leper, and then even beyond that the 00:10:45.679 --> 00:10:51.519 woman that comes to anoint him is just a woman, she's got no name, and that's really important, 00:10:51.519 --> 00:10:57.279 this is an unnamed woman in a leper's home outside the great city in a tiny little no-name village, 00:10:57.919 --> 00:11:02.639 you see it's a real, it's a real case, he's saying something, he's doing something, he's talking to 00:11:02.639 --> 00:11:09.919 us about how Jesus came and took the first step, and he took the first step mainly to the outsider, 00:11:09.919 --> 00:11:16.639 now remember last semester we looked at this, but he talked in the temple about that poor widow, 00:11:16.639 --> 00:11:22.080 if you were around, and she comes and she gives her two little pennies, and all the rich religious 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:28.960 people were dropping in so much cash into the tithing boxes, but the poor widow gave two pennies 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:36.480 and Jesus says, you see that woman, no name, that's a true disciple, and an unnamed widow, 00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:42.960 an unnamed woman earlier before that in Mark had clung to Jesus' robes and said, I'm not going to 00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:48.080 let go of you until you heal my daughter, and he said, look at this faith, and so there's this motif 00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:54.080 not only of the outsider and the insider, but also of unnamed women all throughout Mark's Gospel, 00:11:55.040 --> 00:11:59.360 and if you're reading this in the first century, what you expect, if you're trying to make this 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:04.160 religion popular, is you expect Jesus and Mark to be really appealing to the insiders, who are 00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:08.320 insiders in the first century, to be an insider in the first century, you have to have at least two 00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:14.960 of these qualities, male, you have to be a man, you have to be wealthy, you have to be religious, 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:20.400 and you have to be healthy, so at least two of those, and instead what you see in the Gospel 00:12:20.400 --> 00:12:27.440 of Mark is he goes to the sick, to the poor, he uses unnamed women to say this is true discipleship, 00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:31.200 more often than anything, and that was just the way things were in the first century, 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:34.640 those were the insiders, those were the outsiders, and he's flipping it all around, 00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:43.199 what's the point? Here's the point, Jesus is not saying that he's come to exclude men, the religious, 00:12:43.199 --> 00:12:47.439 the wealthy, and the healthy, and that's not the point at all, instead what he's doing, 00:12:48.399 --> 00:12:57.600 here's the value of Jesus, what it's saying is that in Jesus, God came to make anybody who 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:05.440 recognizes, I am far away from God, I'm an outsider when it comes to the things of the Lord, 00:13:05.440 --> 00:13:11.600 Jesus came to make that person an insider, so he used outsiders in his ministry to say, 00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:16.800 you religious people, you wealthy people, you healthy people, don't you see that you too are an 00:13:16.800 --> 00:13:21.680 outsider when it comes to the things of God, that you're far away from the Lord, and Jesus, 00:13:21.680 --> 00:13:27.120 the value of Jesus is he's come to make outsiders into insiders, and so he used the outsiders to 00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:32.000 show that I've come to make everybody who's an outsider, which happens to be every person, an 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:38.799 insider, and the way that that happens is not by status, not by being healthy, wealthy, and religious, 00:13:38.799 --> 00:13:44.000 but by humility, the condition is humility only, to actually just say I am an outsider, 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:50.720 that's all it takes, before the Lord and without Jesus I'm an outsider, but Jesus's value is that 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:55.919 he is the God who has come to make me an insider, a part of the ultimate family, a part of the 00:13:55.919 --> 00:14:03.120 ultimate people, a part of the ultimate friendship, a part of a community where I can now have an 00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:10.959 identity that can't be taken away from me. C.S. Lewis wrote in 1944, a famous essay called The 00:14:10.959 --> 00:14:19.679 Inner Ring, and in it he says, I believe that in all people's lives at some period, and in many 00:14:19.679 --> 00:14:27.120 lives at all periods, between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:36.479 desire to be inside the local ring, the group, and the terror of being left out. Now Lewis is 00:14:36.479 --> 00:14:40.479 there talking about, he uses this metaphor, the inner ring, to say that for every one of us, 00:14:40.479 --> 00:14:45.679 there are circles of people that could be in the church, that could be at work, that could be at 00:14:45.679 --> 00:14:52.000 school, and university, where you want to be a part of that group and not a part of this group. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:57.199 All of us have experienced that, we know what that's like, and the simple thing to say, we could 00:14:57.199 --> 00:15:02.639 spend time here on thinking about that, but the simple thing to say here is that Jesus Christ, 00:15:02.639 --> 00:15:07.679 the value of Jesus Christ, is that he came to make outsiders ultimate and final insiders, 00:15:09.199 --> 00:15:12.719 and that he came to bring you into the ultimate family, the ultimate community. 00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:19.440 Now, before we move on, let me just mention that I think that does drive us, this outsider, 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:28.240 insider motif we see here to say, who are the insiders and the outsiders in the communities 00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:37.920 that I walk in? And am I aware of the harm and the wrongdoing of unnecessary exclusion in those 00:15:37.919 --> 00:15:44.879 spaces? Who are the groups that I look out and said those are, quote, those people, the other? 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:51.039 Jesus Christ, God himself, is all about the business of making people who feel excluded included. 00:15:52.479 --> 00:16:01.039 And am I, are you? Now, the second way Jesus is valuable, we see Jesus valuable in this passage, 00:16:01.039 --> 00:16:07.599 is that not only does he come to make outsiders insiders, he came to defend 00:16:07.600 --> 00:16:14.560 not demean. And here's what happens in the story. You see this in verse three and four, 00:16:16.080 --> 00:16:22.159 they're reclining at the table. By the way, on a first century table, your head and upper body 00:16:22.159 --> 00:16:26.879 would be facing the table. You'd be seated on a pillow. The table's only about six to 12 inches 00:16:26.879 --> 00:16:32.240 from the ground at times, and your feet would be out. So you're reclining, you're halfway laying 00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:36.160 down with your upper body positioned up. I don't know how they did it. They were much more flexible 00:16:36.159 --> 00:16:42.639 than us, must have been. So that's the way they were seated. And they're all literally reclining 00:16:42.639 --> 00:16:50.079 at the table on a pillow. This woman comes, she breaks the vase, and she pours the oil on him. 00:16:50.079 --> 00:16:56.000 And what happens? Verse four, there were, quote, look at what Mark says, there were some who said 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:02.959 to themselves indignantly, what a waste. Why a waste ointment like this? Now, who are those some? 00:17:02.960 --> 00:17:10.160 You see in verse one and two, and then in verse 10 and 11, that this story is couched in another 00:17:10.160 --> 00:17:15.440 narrative, which is the scribes and Pharisees and chief priests want to murder Jesus. And then verse 00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:21.680 10 and 11, Judas gave them the way to do that. That means that this inside story is trying to 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:27.279 highlight something about how they did it. It's trying to highlight something about Judas. So 00:17:27.279 --> 00:17:33.519 the some who were so angry is Judas. That's what Mark's trying to point to. But it's not just Judas. 00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:37.680 We expect that from Judas, perhaps, if you know the story of the Gospels, but it says, no, there were 00:17:37.680 --> 00:17:43.119 others, they were all whispering to themselves, who are these? It's the disciples. They're the 00:17:43.119 --> 00:17:48.879 indignant ones. They're the angry ones. They are the insiders. And they look at what happened, 00:17:48.879 --> 00:17:55.599 this unnamed woman, this outsider, and they get so angry. And later on, if you look down at verse 00:17:55.599 --> 00:18:03.919 five, it says, it uses the word, they scolded her. There it is right at the end of verse five. 00:18:03.919 --> 00:18:09.599 That's a Greek word that literally means, and they flared their nostrils at her. So they were so 00:18:09.599 --> 00:18:14.319 mad that their nostril, you know, how when people get raging mad, their nostrils flare. That's what 00:18:14.319 --> 00:18:19.519 it tells us here. That's how mad they were. And this is the disciples getting that angry. And 00:18:19.519 --> 00:18:23.279 why did they get so angry? And here's what they said. They said, you know, you could have gotten so 00:18:23.279 --> 00:18:29.200 much money. You could have sold that bottle and gotten so much money and given it away to all the 00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:34.559 poor. And of course, when you realize what Mark is doing here, you quickly realize that this is a 00:18:34.559 --> 00:18:40.960 pretext. The poor, you know, what does the poor stand for? They're literally saying, you know, we 00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:45.519 could have had the greatest meal of our lives with that bottle. And of course, after that, we 00:18:45.519 --> 00:18:50.480 would have given some of it away to the poor. This is just a pretext. They're using the poor to say, 00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:57.279 Judas, he's using the poor to say, I really wanted that cash. I really wanted a chance to get that 00:18:57.279 --> 00:19:04.079 money. They desire the money, not what it stands for. The poor are nothing but a cover for them. 00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:11.200 And immediately what they do is they demean her. So they say about her, why was this ointment wasted? 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:17.519 They call her a fool. They scolded her. Their nostrils flare, enrage at her. And Jesus steps up 00:19:17.519 --> 00:19:27.359 and he defends her. He says, leave her alone. Leave her alone. Now, in the book of Job, in 00:19:27.359 --> 00:19:32.559 all the way to Romans chapter eight, one of the things we see about God in the Old Testament, 00:19:32.559 --> 00:19:38.319 about Jesus Christ after he goes into heaven in the New Testament, is that one of his roles is 00:19:38.319 --> 00:19:45.599 that he defends. He stands in the heavenly realm right now. And the principalities and powers of 00:19:45.599 --> 00:19:51.919 darkness make accusations against you. And they say, this person says they follow you, but look 00:19:51.919 --> 00:19:56.799 at their secret life. This person says they follow you, but look at what they've done. Look at what 00:19:56.799 --> 00:20:02.480 they did in the past. How can you really say they're not guilty? And Jesus comes with his scars 00:20:03.279 --> 00:20:10.399 and says, I defend her. I defend him. You can't make an accusation any longer. He defends, 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:16.480 he doesn't demean. He never does. And here's the beginning of that moment of what he will do in 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:23.519 his heavenly ministry. He defends, he never demeans. Now, but who is it that they're really, 00:20:23.519 --> 00:20:31.840 really demeaning? They demean, they demean the woman. Jesus defends. But more fundamentally, 00:20:31.840 --> 00:20:36.800 it is not the woman that they're trying to demean. Who is it that they demean? What did they say? 00:20:36.799 --> 00:20:45.200 They say, why was this oil, this anointment wasted? And you see what they're saying? They're saying, 00:20:46.240 --> 00:20:54.720 Jesus is not worth such a lavish gift. You have wasted this on him. They demean her, 00:20:54.720 --> 00:21:00.319 he defends her, but ultimately they demeaned him. They said, Jesus is not worth this amount of cash. 00:21:01.359 --> 00:21:05.200 We could have gotten so much money for this and done so many other things. He is not that valuable. 00:21:05.200 --> 00:21:12.640 Yes, this is the disciples. Yes, Jesus, we think you're great, but let's not get over the top 00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:18.720 about it. Well, that's not poor such a three years worth of wage upon this man. They don't see, 00:21:20.319 --> 00:21:26.640 she has some sense of his value, this outsider in a way that the disciples do not yet know. 00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:30.000 They can't yet see it. They think that it was completely wasted upon him. 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:36.720 Now, before we move to the second and final point, what that means for us, we've got to take note of 00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:45.599 this, I think, is this, it means that you can be near Jesus, you can be around Jesus, 00:21:46.720 --> 00:21:50.880 you can be near the things of God and not have intimacy with Christ. 00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:59.759 Judas was around Jesus. The disciples were around Jesus. And yet what we see really clearly here 00:21:59.759 --> 00:22:05.759 is that they don't have intimacy with him. And look at how they look at how this works. Just one 00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:12.879 example, they want to replace him with good works. So they pit those two things against one another. 00:22:12.879 --> 00:22:18.960 They say, you know, don't value him in that way. Instead, do good works. In other words, they say, 00:22:18.960 --> 00:22:24.079 it's not about Jesus, it's about religion. It's about going out and giving to the poor. It's about 00:22:24.079 --> 00:22:27.039 loving your neighbor. You know, that's the real meaning of this. That's what we're here for. 00:22:27.039 --> 00:22:34.000 And they don't, they can't see that there's no way to truly love your neighbor and truly love the 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:40.480 poor until you first set your eyes upon the fountainhead of love himself. Real love incarnate. 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:43.920 You say, this is the difference in Christianity and religion. It's right here. The disciples don't 00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:50.480 yet get it. Christianity says above all else, you've got to see the value and preciousness 00:22:50.480 --> 00:22:57.759 of Jesus Christ. Religion says, I'm happy to be around Jesus in order to be a good person, 00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:02.480 in order to care for the poor, in order to love my neighbor. That's the difference. Christianity 00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:08.160 versus religion. And Christianity says, no, no, no, you've got to see the value and preciousness of 00:23:08.160 --> 00:23:14.400 Jesus if you're ever going to truly love the poor. Right? The disciples can't see it. Only the woman 00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:19.920 can at the end of their life. And we've got to be aware that you can be around Jesus. You can be 00:23:19.920 --> 00:23:27.519 near and merely be religious, replacing the value and preciousness of God himself with good works. 00:23:28.080 --> 00:23:32.560 You can put those in a relationship of exchange. And that's exactly what takes place here. 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:38.880 Here's Jesus's preciousness. Here's his value. Here's his uniqueness. He defends. He doesn't 00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:47.759 demean. Here's how far this goes. Jesus defended her. But the real truth of the gospel is that 00:23:47.759 --> 00:23:54.720 Jesus Christ came not just to defend the woman, unnamed woman. Jesus Christ came to defend these 00:23:54.720 --> 00:24:03.119 disciples. He didn't come to demean them. He could have. Jesus Christ came to go to the cross for 00:24:03.119 --> 00:24:10.400 these men, for this, for me, for you. This is how far he goes with his defense. He became ultimately 00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:17.440 defense less at the cross because he wants to defend people who demean him. We shout, crucify 00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:22.400 him. They're going to shout that on Friday. And so he goes to the cross for the people who are 00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:28.480 flaring their nostrils at him in the crowd. That's how far the defense goes. He came to defend, 00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:35.759 not to demean. And he finds us as individuals so precious that at the end of this passage we're 00:24:35.759 --> 00:24:40.240 told, he says, you know, whenever the gospel is told in all the world for the rest of history, 00:24:40.240 --> 00:24:47.039 here we are today, right? 2024. Whenever the gospel is talked about in the rest of world history, 00:24:47.039 --> 00:24:53.440 he wants her to be mentioned in it. That's what he says down in verse nine. What she has done today 00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:58.319 will be told in memory of her wherever the gospel is proclaimed. And that means the gospel is a 00:24:58.319 --> 00:25:04.639 history and that history includes what happened here at this moment. Jesus Christ came to die 00:25:04.639 --> 00:25:10.399 in order to defend those who demean him. That's how far his love goes. That's the preciousness, 00:25:10.400 --> 00:25:17.120 the value. Now secondly, lastly, and we've got to be brief. Not only do we, if you want to have 00:25:17.120 --> 00:25:21.680 intimacy with Christ today, with God today, you've got to see his preciousness, his value, 00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:29.840 at least in those two ways. But lastly, also, you've got to receive and see the importance of 00:25:29.840 --> 00:25:36.080 his anointment here. Okay, so in some ways the central character of this story is the oil, 00:25:36.079 --> 00:25:42.639 the oil in its relationship to Jesus. So we need to make sure we don't pass by that. This is a strange 00:25:42.639 --> 00:25:51.039 event. Why does she pour spikynard oil on his head? And he then turned around and say, anytime you 00:25:51.039 --> 00:25:56.480 share the gospel, she needs to be remembered. This event needs to be remembered. Two reasons. 00:25:57.439 --> 00:26:02.799 There's two reasons in the Bible for pouring oil over somebody's head. The first he tells us 00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:09.200 really explicitly, he says in verse eight, she has anointed my body for burial. So in the first 00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:16.240 century, in the Greco-Roman context and the Jewish context, if you had money and if a loved one died, 00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:21.519 you would typically anoint their body, you would pour oil over them. And this is not olive oil. 00:26:22.319 --> 00:26:27.599 This is an oil that has a real fragrance, a real plungeance about it. Why? Same reasons, 00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:33.839 because you are trying to bathe the body in the midst of what you know is going to happen, decay. 00:26:34.559 --> 00:26:40.319 So the body is going to decay and there's smell along with that. And so you would bathe the body, 00:26:40.319 --> 00:26:44.480 it's a sign of honor, anointment, you're going to cover it in an aroma. So we even read that 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:50.639 Joseph of Arimathea and then later the women who came to the tomb brought what with them, spices, 00:26:50.639 --> 00:26:55.439 because they were going to go into the tomb they had hoped to and lay spices all around Jesus. 00:26:55.440 --> 00:27:00.160 Right, so that was normal practice. If you were a criminal, if you were executed especially, 00:27:00.160 --> 00:27:04.960 or if you were poor, that never happened. So the bodies were not treated that way, especially 00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:11.759 for criminals. Jesus was about to die a criminal's death. He would not in any public way be anointed. 00:27:11.759 --> 00:27:18.559 And so she came to prepare his body for burial. Now here's the paradox. 00:27:18.559 --> 00:27:26.159 If you see the preciousness of Jesus Christ and the value that this is God who has come to take 00:27:26.159 --> 00:27:32.639 the first step towards you to bring you close to Him, then you know one thing, God should not die. 00:27:33.440 --> 00:27:40.319 And yet here we are and his body is being prepared for decay. The God of all the earth, 00:27:40.319 --> 00:27:45.119 the God who made heaven and earth, the Son of God right here, he should not die and yet his body is 00:27:45.119 --> 00:27:50.639 being anointed for burial. And when you come to 1 Corinthians 15, Paul highlights and says, 00:27:50.639 --> 00:27:55.679 what's the gospel? And one of the lines he includes in the meaning of the gospel is he says, 00:27:55.679 --> 00:28:01.839 Jesus Christ was buried. And if you recite the Apostles Creed, you say Jesus was buried. 00:28:01.839 --> 00:28:07.359 In Enrollments chapter 6 verse 4, Paul goes so far as to say, part of the gospel is to say, 00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:13.599 I was buried with Jesus. And so sometimes we miss this, we talk about Jesus's 00:28:13.599 --> 00:28:19.199 cross and His resurrection, fundamental, but the New Testament actually comes and says, 00:28:19.199 --> 00:28:25.039 and He was buried. And that is part of the gospel. And one of the things that his burial says is that 00:28:25.039 --> 00:28:32.559 he was really dead. He wasn't asleep. Jesus, when He died, He really died. He died all the way. 00:28:32.559 --> 00:28:37.519 He died as much as any other body can die. And so He was buried. And Paul comes and says, 00:28:37.519 --> 00:28:44.000 do you know today, if you see the value and beauty of Jesus and you follow Him, Paul tells you, 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:51.519 the day that Jesus was buried, you were buried with Him that day. So that whatever happened to 00:28:51.519 --> 00:28:57.920 Him on that day has already happened to you before the eyes of the Father. You've experienced 00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:04.079 that. You don't have to be buried in ultimate judgment because He was already buried. Whatever 00:29:04.079 --> 00:29:07.919 has happened to Him has now happened for you. That's the first meaning of His burial. She was 00:29:07.919 --> 00:29:14.240 preparing that. If that's true of you today, if you see, look, if you just see the value of Jesus 00:29:14.240 --> 00:29:20.000 today, then that means that you were anointed with Him in this moment. You were prepared for 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:27.519 burial. You experienced everything He experienced, you in Him, He for you. That's the power of the 00:29:27.519 --> 00:29:32.240 gospel. This is already true for you. Now, there's a second reason and final thing. 00:29:32.240 --> 00:29:38.559 And that's that anointment is not just about prepping a body for burial. Anointment is also 00:29:38.559 --> 00:29:44.960 something that happens all throughout the Bible, Genesis to Revelation. And we see kings anointed, 00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:50.640 we see prophets anointed, we see priests anointed, we see places anointed, tabernacles, 00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:55.759 temples. The very first anointment in all of the Bible is when there's oil poured over 00:29:55.759 --> 00:30:02.160 Jacob's pillow, the stone that Jacob laid on where he had a vision of a ladder between heaven 00:30:02.160 --> 00:30:06.640 and earth. That's the very first thing that gets anointed in all the Bible. What is going on with 00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:13.759 anointment in the biblical, wider biblical picture? What is up with this? Anointment is a symbol or a 00:30:13.759 --> 00:30:23.759 sign that says, here is a person or a place where God has chosen to send His presence. That's what 00:30:23.759 --> 00:30:30.960 anointment stands for. So in the book of James, James says that the elders of the church can now go 00:30:31.680 --> 00:30:39.519 and anoint a person, a sick person with oil and seek and ask God to heal them. Why? Why? Because 00:30:39.519 --> 00:30:45.519 when you do that, you're symbolically asking God's special presence to fall upon that person, to heal 00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:49.200 them. That's what the anointment symbolizes. And all throughout the Bible, that's what it means. 00:30:49.200 --> 00:30:54.799 Where does it come from? Why this symbol of anointment? And here's what the theologians have said. 00:30:54.799 --> 00:30:58.880 Here's what the Christians have said throughout the centuries. The reason that anointment takes 00:30:58.880 --> 00:31:05.840 place throughout the Bible is because it is a sign and symbol of the fragrances and the smells 00:31:05.840 --> 00:31:12.160 of Eden itself. That in the Garden of Eden, you know, what is spiked in our oil? It's actually 00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:17.279 the oil that comes out of a root. In the very first place that God put humanity was in the Garden 00:31:17.279 --> 00:31:24.079 of Eden. Full of spices, full of smells, full of roots, full of oils, full of fragrances, 00:31:24.079 --> 00:31:29.519 full of beauty. And so this act of anointment throughout the Bible is saying, I want Eden. 00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:35.359 You know, this is a place where God is momentarily bringing Eden down into the temple, which was 00:31:35.359 --> 00:31:40.559 decorated like Eden, into the Tabernacle, which was decorated like Eden, into a person. When Jesus 00:31:40.559 --> 00:31:46.079 is anointed and saying, do you want to find Eden? Do you want to be in the Garden of Eden? Do you 00:31:46.079 --> 00:31:55.119 want to be close to God? Here he is. It's him. He is Eden. And he smells like it. And he is giving 00:31:55.119 --> 00:32:00.319 the aroma of the very presence of God from the Garden of Eden because he literally is Eden. 00:32:00.319 --> 00:32:06.799 Eden is the place where God comes to dwell with us. And that's him. The Garden has come. It's him. 00:32:06.799 --> 00:32:14.960 He's anointed. This is why we call Jesus, Mark calls Jesus what? Not just Jesus, but what's Jesus's 00:32:14.960 --> 00:32:20.960 second name. It's not really a second name. Jesus Christ, which is not a last name at all. What does 00:32:20.960 --> 00:32:27.600 Christ mean? Christ means Christos, Jesus, the anointed one, the one who has come to bring 00:32:27.600 --> 00:32:37.039 the fragrance of God. Eden itself, right? Here's the gospel angle. She broke that flask and she 00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:44.799 gave her a gift totally. That was nothing but a microcosm. You know, she doesn't, what does she do 00:32:44.799 --> 00:32:53.519 in this passage? She points us to the one who gave himself to the uttermost. She gave the whole of 00:32:53.519 --> 00:32:58.960 her gift, but he gave something that cannot be measured. He gave himself totally and fully so 00:32:58.960 --> 00:33:09.279 that you could be close. Now, a couple quick ways you can respond today. One, the woman, this woman, 00:33:09.279 --> 00:33:18.160 this unnamed woman is an example. She saw the preciousness of Jesus. If you feel today like 00:33:18.160 --> 00:33:24.079 you're far away from the Lord right now, or you're coming today and exploring what does it mean to get 00:33:24.079 --> 00:33:28.879 close to God, I don't know that I've ever been close to God. The woman's example is right here. 00:33:28.879 --> 00:33:35.279 It's saying you've got to meditate on the value and beauty of Jesus Christ. That's the first thing 00:33:35.279 --> 00:33:41.839 you're invited to do today is just, do you take time in your life at all to meditate on the reality 00:33:41.839 --> 00:33:47.839 of his value? All right, that's for a second briefly. What does she do then? When she saw his 00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:56.480 value, she gave what was most precious to her to the one who is most precious. One of the ways that 00:33:56.480 --> 00:34:02.639 you grow in intimacy with Jesus is you've got to be willing to give what is most valuable to you, 00:34:02.639 --> 00:34:11.440 to him, to give it away. One example, for most of us in the modern world, that is time. How do you 00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:16.480 meditate and see the value of Jesus? You've got to actually say, I'm going to, in the midst of my 00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:21.119 busyness and the midst of a schedule where there is no time, I'm going to give what is most precious 00:34:21.119 --> 00:34:28.320 to me time to meditate on the one who is most precious, Jesus. You've got to give time. Intimacy 00:34:28.320 --> 00:34:33.840 requires time. It requires quality time. That's true with marriage. That's true with relationships. 00:34:33.840 --> 00:34:39.599 That's true with parents and children. That is true above anything else with God. Intimacy 00:34:39.599 --> 00:34:44.880 requires time. And so you've got to give away what is precious to you, time to have that intimacy. 00:34:44.880 --> 00:34:55.920 If you feel far away from the Lord today, give Jesus your time in order to feel close to him 00:34:56.800 --> 00:35:03.119 because your feelings will follow your actions. Our feelings often have to follow our actions. 00:35:03.119 --> 00:35:06.559 And so if you come today and you say, I don't really feel like worshiping, what do you do? 00:35:06.559 --> 00:35:15.199 You worship. You do it anyway so that your feelings follow the actions, the time that you've put in. 00:35:16.719 --> 00:35:22.000 Jesus says you will always have the poor. Now here, he's not saying, don't care about people in need 00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:27.679 and struggling. Instead, he's saying, if you want to truly love the poor in your life, if you want 00:35:27.679 --> 00:35:33.279 to truly love other people and come outside of yourself, the first order of business is steps 00:35:33.280 --> 00:35:41.040 one and two, seeing the value of Jesus and giving him your love and your time so that then that love 00:35:41.040 --> 00:35:47.120 can become a fountainhead for the tributaries, the water that springs from it to love other people. 00:35:47.680 --> 00:35:52.480 So if we don't come and find the real source of love and loving other people in Jesus first, 00:35:53.040 --> 00:35:56.560 what's going to happen is that when you try to love other people, it's always going to be for 00:35:56.560 --> 00:36:01.440 selfish reasons. And it'll eventually just dry up. If you don't have a fountainhead, a source, 00:36:01.440 --> 00:36:08.159 everything else just dries up. Come to Jesus, see his value, and then you can see the value in other 00:36:08.159 --> 00:36:14.320 people. That's how it actually grows. And then lastly, I think it's important to just end today 00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:20.079 by saying we can see in Jesus the call and invitation to every one of us this morning 00:36:20.079 --> 00:36:32.000 to defend, not demean. To seek, to defend people's name, reputation, honor, and value as much as we 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:40.239 possibly can. We see him calling us today to look for the outsider in order to help them become 00:36:40.239 --> 00:36:46.400 insiders, to look for the person that we've excluded and say, I want to now include, because 00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:52.559 Jesus Christ in his preciousness took the step towards me to include me. Defend not demean, 00:36:52.559 --> 00:36:57.360 to turn those excluded into those included. And it's all because of this one power. 00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:05.599 Jesus came to defend me, the outsider. Jesus came for every human being by going to be buried 00:37:05.599 --> 00:37:17.599 in death for them. Can you say today, that's me, I'm the outsider, I'm the one Jesus came for. 00:37:18.799 --> 00:37:27.920 He came to get close to me. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you that you came to get close to us. 00:37:27.920 --> 00:37:37.920 And so we just confess before you today that apart from the value of your coming, we would remain 00:37:37.920 --> 00:37:47.920 totally far away, apart, separated from God. So I lift up before you, anyone today who is longing 00:37:47.920 --> 00:37:55.039 in their heart to be close to you and feels frustrated in that, that you would draw close to them 00:37:55.039 --> 00:38:03.039 right now by your spirit. And I lift anyone up to you today that has yet to feel even frustrated 00:38:03.039 --> 00:38:09.519 by not being close to you because they are still yet to see the beauty in being close to you. And so 00:38:09.519 --> 00:38:18.159 we pray for all of us, Lord, that you would draw us back, draw us near, help us to see your infinite 00:38:18.159 --> 00:38:25.440 worth so that we would worship, ascribe to you the worth that you truly have right now as we sing. 00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:49.440 So we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.