An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was. “Well,” said the farmer, “It was good. They did something different, however. They sang praise choruses instead of hymns.”
“Praise choruses,” said his wife, “What are those?”
“Oh, they’re okay. They’re sort of like hymns, only different,” said the farmer.
“Well, what’s the difference?” asked his wife.
The farmer said, “Well it’s like this – If I were to say to you: ‘Martha, the cows are in the corn,’ well that would be a hymn. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you: ‘Martha, Martha, Martha, Oh, Martha, MARTHA, MARTHA, the cows, the big cows, the brown cows, the black cows, the white cows, the black and white cows, the COWS, COWS, COWS are in the corn, are in the corn, are in the corn, are in the corn, the CORN, CORN, CORN,’ Then, if I were to repeat the whole thing two or three times, well that would be a praise chorus.” (Author Unknown, from a Biblical Foundations of Worship class at Crown College, 2010).
On the other hand, a young farmer who was used to the worship in his new church found himself in an old traditional church one weekend. He came home and his wife asked him how it was. “Well,” said the young farmer, “It was good. They did something different, however. They sang hymns instead of regular songs.”
“Hymns,” said his wife, “What are those?”
“Oh, they’re okay. They’re sort of like regular songs, only different,” said the young farmer.
“Well, what’s the difference?” asked his wife.
The young man said, “Well it’s like this – If I were to say to you, ‘Martha, the cows are in the corn,’ well that would be a regular song. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you:
Oh Martha, dear Martha, hear thou my cry.
Inclinest thine ear to the words of my mouth;
Turn thou thy whole wondrous ear by and by
To the righteous, inimitable, glorious truth.
For the way of the animals who can explain
There in their heads is no shadow of sense,
Hearkenest they in God’s sun or his rain
Unless from the mild, tempting corn they are fenced.
Yea those cows in glad bovine, rebellious delight,
Have broke free their shackles, their warm pens eschewed.
Then goaded by minions of darkness and night
They all my mild Chilliwack sweet corn have chewed.
So look to that bright shining day by and by,
Where all foul corruptions of earth are reborn.
Where no vicious animal makes my soul cry
And I no longer see those foul cows in the corn.
“Then, if I were to do only verses one, three and four and do a key change on the last verse, well that would be a hymn.” (Author Unknown, from a Biblical Foundations of Worship class at Crown College, 2010)
Sometimes, in our discussions about worship, we get caught up on trivial things like the style of music, but worship is about something much bigger than that. Worship is not about whether we sing hymns or praise choruses. It’s about expressing our love for the Lord.
This morning, I want us as a church to take a look at that bigger picture when it comes to our worship together. I’m not going to talk about contemporary versus traditional styles of music. I’m not interested in discussions about the organ or the drums. Instead, I want us to focus on what it means to truly and honestly love the Lord, our God.
What does that look like? How does Jesus want us to express our love for Him? What pleases Him most in our expressions of worship?
Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Mark 14, Mark 14, where we get a beautiful picture of real worship.
Mark 14:3-9 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly. “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (NIV)
When everybody else criticized this woman, Jesus heaped on the praise, because of her lavish expressions of love. And as such, she shows us what real worship is all about. You see, if we truly love Jesus like this woman loved Jesus, then we will…
LOVE HIM EXTRAVAGANTLY.
We will go overboard in our expressions of love. We will go beyond the ordinary. We will overdo it to the point of "waste" in some people’s opinions.
That’s how Mary loved Jesus here. Yes, we learn from John 12 that this woman is none other than Mary herself, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, the one Jesus raised from the dead.
One time, they were having a dinner party with Jesus as the special guest. Martha was busy in the kitchen, taking care of all the details of the meal while Mary chose to sit in the living room listening to Jesus. Well, that irked Martha no end. Finally, she got to the breaking point where she could take it no longer. She ran into the living room and told Jesus to rebuke Mary for not helping out.
I suppose Martha thought Mary was wasting her time. Here, Jesus disciples are criticizing Mary for wasting her money. It seems that whenever we meet Mary in the Scriptures, she is wasting something – her time or her money.
But Jesus praises such “waste” when it is lavished on Him. To Martha, Jesus said, “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). To His disciples, Jesus said (vs.6), “Leave her alone… She has done a beautiful thing to me.”
Mary loved Jesus extravagantly – some would say wastefully. The perfume she poured on Jesus’ head was not some cheap brand she picked up at the corner store. No. It was pure nard, verse 3 says, and pure nard was made from the dried leaves of a rare Himalayan plant. It was the Jean Patou Joy perfume of her day, advertised as the most expensive perfume in the world. Today, just one ounce retails for $450. This pure nard was probably a family heirloom, passed down from one generation to another, from mother to daughter. It’s the kind of perfume they would rarely, if ever, use. Yet Mary breaks the jar and pours it all over Jesus’ head.
It’s extravagance to the max!, but that’s what Jesus loves in our worship. Jesus loves it when we love Him extravagantly.
I like what Chuck Swindoll says about Mary’s extravagance here. In his book, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, he writes, “I believe this event has been preserved to teach one major message: There are certain times when extravagance is appropriate… In our day of emphasis on high-tech calculations and finely tuned budgets with persistent reminders of cost, restraint, and propriety (that is, never being guilty of doing anything outside the bounds of the ordinary), anything beyond the basics can be misconstrued as excessive. If you buy into that ever present Spartan philosophy, then everything you build will be functional, ordinary, and basic. Everything you purchase will be at the lowest cost. Everything you do will be average.
“On the basis of this magnificent story,” Swindoll continues, “I feel there are times when ‘extravagant’ gifts are not only appropriate, they are occasionally essential!” (Chuck Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p.68)
The problem is too many of us are content to get by with as little as we can.
In one of the early Apollo projects, someone stuck his head inside the capsule and said to the team of astronauts getting ready to take off, “Well, how does it feel?”
With a grin, one of the astronauts replied, “It really makes you think twice inhere when you realize everything in this whole project was constructed according to the lowest bid!” (Chuck Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p.68)
That’s the way a lot of people live their lives – according to the lowest bid -- and sadly, that’s how too many of us love our Lord.
Dear friends, especially when it comes to our worship, don’t go for the lowest bid. Instead, let’s go way beyond the ordinary when it comes to showing Jesus how much we love Him. Give your all to Him. Give to the point where others may consider it a “waste,” for if we truly love the Lord, we will love Him extravagantly.
More than that, we will LOVE HIM EXPENSIVELY.
We will love Him at great cost to ourselves. We will gladly pay a high price to show our love for Jesus.
That’s what Mary did here. The cost of her one act of worship was more than a whole year’s wage (vs.5). In today’s economy, that’s more than $32,400, according to a recent issue of U.S. News and World Report (April 2010).
Mary’s act of worship cost her a whole lot of money, but she willingly and gladly gave it away, because she loved Jesus so much. And we will do the same if we love Jesus like she did.
In 2 Samuel 24, King David was given the opportunity to worship God for free. You see, David wanted to buy Araunah’s threshing floor above his palace as a place of worship, but Araunah said, “Take it. And while you’re at it, take some of my oxen and some of my wood to make the appropriate offerings.”
But David said, “No, I insist on paying for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). In David’s mind, it wasn’t real worship if it didn’t cost him anything.
My friends, true worship always costs us something. If it doesn’t, it isn’t real worship. It may be religious ritual, but it is not a true expression of our love for the Lord.
The Bible says, “God so loved the world that He GAVE His one and only Son” (John 3:16). The Bible says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and GAVE Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). The Bible says, “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ DIED for us” (Rom. 5:8). That’s what true love does.
It gives and gives and gives until it has given all, and that’s how Christ loved us from a cross. He gave His life for us. He died in our place for our sins and rose again, so He could offer us eternal life as a free gift.
All we need to do is trust Him as our Savior. His love is free to us, but it cost Him everything He had. So we can’t help but love Him for the way He loved us, but I wonder: how much has our love for Him cost US?
Several years ago, Jack Eckerd, founder of the Eckerd Drugstore chain (now Rite Aid), trusted Christ with His life. Shortly thereafter, he was walking through one of his stores where copies of Playboy and Penthouse magazines blared at him from the magazine racks. Eckerd was no loner in active management, but he called the president of the company and urged him to get rid of the pornographic magazines. The president protested, because those magazines brought in a big profit. Eckerd himself stood to lose a lot of money, because he was the largest stockholder, but he persisted and the offensive magazines were removed from all 1700 drugstores. When asked why he did it, Eckerd simply replied, “God wouldn’t let me off the hook!”
You see, his newfound love for the Lord demanded such a response. He had to do it, because he loved Jesus more than he loved his money.
Tim Keller, pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, talks about meeting with a woman who had just started attending his church. Before that, she had never heard about the distinction between the gospel and religion, between grace and a works-based righteousness. She had never heard about God’s unconditional love. Instead, she thought that God accepts us only if we are good enough, and she told her pastor that the new message was scary.
Tim Keller asked her why it was scary and she replied: “If I was saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with ‘rights’ – I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by grace – then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.”
Tim Keller said, “She understood the dynamic of grace and gratitude. If when you have lost all fear of punishment you also lose all incentive to live a good, unselfish life, then the only incentive you ever had to live a decent life was fear. This woman could see immediately that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had an edge to it. She knew that if she was a sinner saved by grace, she was (if anything) more subject to the sovereign Lordship of God. She knew that if Jesus really had done all this for her, she would not be her own. She would joyfully, gratefully belong to Jesus, who provided all this for her at infinite cost to himself. (Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, Riverhead Books, 2008, pp. 189-190; www.PreachingToday.com)
You see, when we truly understand how much Christ loved us, we can’t help but love Him for the way He loved us, but such love always costs.
Isaac Watts put it this way: Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.
And it’s not because JESUS’ love for us demands it, no. His love is free! Rather, OUR love for Jesus demands it. We give our all not because we HAVE to. We give our all because we WANT to out of our love for Him in response to His love for us.
Do we really love Jesus? Then is it enough just to give him an hour or two on Sunday morning? Does that really cost us anything?
Do we really love Jesus? Then is it enough for us just to put a few dollars in the offering plate each week? Does that really cost us anything? Do we really miss the money anyway?
In Mark 12, the widow put in “two very small copper coins.” Jesus said, “It was all she had to live on” (Mark 12:41-44). Are we even giving half of what we have to show our love for Jesus? Mary, here in Mark 14, gave more than a whole year’s wages. Are we giving even a tenth of that to show our love for Jesus? And if a tenth, why stop there? Doesn’t our love compel us to give Him everything?
If we love Him, we will love Him extravagantly; we will love Him expensively; and finally, if we love Jesus, we will…
LOVE HIM OPENLY.
We will love Him without shame in front of everybody else.
That’s how Mary loved Jesus. The normal custom in her day was to serve the men at the table and then back away to eat in another room. A Jewish woman never reclined at a table full of men. She stayed away and kept her thoughts to herself. Not Mary. Very openly, in front of a table full of men, she expressed her love for Jesus.
As a result, she opened herself up to public ridicule and criticism. & They gave it to her with both barrels. Verse 5 says, “They rebuked her harshly.” But that didn’t matter to her. She was willing to risk the public ridicule and shame, because she loved Jesus so much.
And we will do the same if we love Jesus as much as Mary did. We will open ourselves up to such criticism to show our love for the Lord.
I know that’s hard, but remember what Teddy Roosevelt once said: It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbles or how the doer of deeds might have done better. The credit belongs to the man (or the woman) who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. (Leadership, Fall 1980)
In Jesus day, those “cold and timid souls” were the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They were the critics who knew “neither victory nor defeat.” But chief among them all was Judas, one of Jesus’ own disciples.
From John 12, we find that it was Judas who initiated the criticism against Mary. & Here in Mark 14, Mary’s lavish love is set against the backdrop of Judas’ betrayal.
Mark 14:1-2 Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. “But not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.” (NIV)
Mark 14:10-11 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over. (NIV)– I.e., at a time when there were no crowds around.
Mary loved her Lord publically, openly. Judas betrayed Him privately, secretly. Mary loved her Lord expensively – more than a year’s wages. Judas sold his Lord cheaply – for the price of a slave. Mary was criticized for her devotion (vs.4) – “they rebuked her harshly. Judas was praised for his deceit (vs.11) - “they were delighted to hear this.” At first, it seemed that Judas got the better deal, but we know better, don’t we?
Here, Mary is accused of wasting money (vs.4). But Jesus called Judas “the son of perdition” in John 17 – literally, the son of waste (same word). Judas accused Mary of wasting her money, but Judas himself wasted his life. He ended up hanging himself, spilling his guts all over a potter’s field.
Please, don’t waste your life in secret, cheap acts designed to get the praise of people. Instead, give it all away in exposed, expensive, extravagant acts of devotion to our Lord, because that is what worship is all about.
