Please stand and repeat with me our current memory verse ...
2 Timothy 2:11-13
“Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we disown Him, He will also disown us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot disown
Himself.”
And, our memory refresher verse for this week is ...
Romans 10:9-10 (NLT)
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
“For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.”
You may be seated.
Please open your Bibles to Luke 7:36-50 which we will read in a few minutes.
Today I want to read two passages about similar events.
Both of the events revolve around the anointing of Jesus with nard, an expensive perfume, from a sealed bottle made out of alabaster.
With that in mind let’s go ahead and read Luke 7:36-50
OK, now, let’s turn over in our Bibles to John 12:1-8
This account is of the same event that is recorded in Matthew 26 and Mark 14.
These are all similar because they all take place in Bethany where Lazarus, Martha and Mary lived.
In these three accountings of the event the disciples are there but there is no mention of any Pharisees being there.
With that in mind let’s go ahead and read John 12:1-8
In the three accounts from Matthew, Mark and John, Mary is either mentioned directly or it is assumed that it is Mary because Jesus would spend time at their home when He was in Bethany.
In the account in Luke the woman is described as there is no mention of the town at all.
------- The three groups of people -------
So, we see in these two similar accounts three groups of people; the anointers, the disciples and the Pharisees and they are all coming from various perspectives.
The Pharisees see themselves as superior to Jesus and they are threatened that He will actually talk back to them. They were NOT used to that. Sure they had their theological disagreements with the Scribes and other teachers of the law but they were not used to being chastised in public.
To the Pharisees Jesus is some kind of an upstart.
They were used to getting all of the attention; when they spoke, people listened.
Now people are listening to this Jesus guy!
One thing that needs to be clear here is that Jesus was NOT a Pharisee; He was a Rabbi. But in their eyes He was a young, untrained Rabbi with at ragtag group of followers; fishermen, tax collectors and rebels.
And, in the event recorded in Luke Jesus has been invited to dinner by a Pharisee.
We don’t know why; perhaps the guy was just trying to figure Him out.
The second group of people we see are the disciples. They are at the dinner given in Jesus’ honor in the town of Bethany. They are looking for the Messiah. Not the suffering Messiah but the conquering Messiah.
They were just common people with a common future ahead of them until Jesus came along. Now they were in the inner circle of people who would be there when Jesus delivered Israel from Roman domination.
Finally, there were the anointers; Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus and the “sinful woman”.
Both of these women were devout. But devout is not even a strong enough word.
Neither of them were invited to the dinner but they were driven to go out of their passion for the Lord.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is the crisis in each of these events?
A woman comes into the dinner with a treasure worth roughly $49,274 which was the average yearly wage in the US in 2017. Then she breaks the jar and pours the perfume out on Jesus and actually, she lets down her hair (horror of horrors!) and physically touches Him!
I tried to come up with a “what if someone walked in here and did such and such” a scenario that would be the equivalent of what these women did but I couldn’t think of one. I tried to think of something that would evoke the same intensity of reaction that this event brought about, but I couldn’t think of anything. Sorry …
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, what was the response to these crises?
The response of the Pharisees …
They are analyzing Jesus!
“If this Man were a prophet … He would know that she is a sinner!”
He is letting that sinner touch Him!
The response of the disciples …
The first response is one of colossal waste! WHAT ARE YOU DOING????
Who was responding?
Matthew – “When the disciples saw this they were indignant …”
Mark – “Some of those present were saying indignantly ….”
John – “One of (Jesus’) disciples, Judas Iscariot … objected ….”
John 12:5 NIV
“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth $49,274.”
Were the disciples really worried about the poor and other needy people?
In other places in the Gospels we see the disciples:
Telling a blind man who wants to be healed to shut up
Telling mom’s who want Jesus to bless their children to go away
Arguing about who will be the greatest in Jesus’ kingdom
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What can we learn from the responses?
The Pharisees did not believe Jesus was the Messiah!
Jesus had not “proven Himself to them!”
The Pharisees were treating Jesus with disrespect even by their own standards
The Pharisees’ pride blinded them to their own sinfulness
The Pharisees were self righteous and arrogant
The disciples were looking for the fulfillment of their own hopes and dreams instead of the spiritual objectives that they were being taught by Jesus.
The disciples were seeing Jesus as a means to an end.
The disciples were looking forward to being in the inner circle of Jesus’ earthly reign.
The “Anointers” had eyes only for Jesus!
The “Anointers” did not care what the disciples were thinking of them.
The “Anointers” did not care what the Pharisees were thinking of them.
Mary had heard Jesus’ prophecies of His own death and was anointing Him for burial.
The “Anointer” described only as a sinner was pouring out what was most likely her most costly possession to honor Jesus.
Look at the order of her actions!
She is bowing at the feet of Jesus in humility
She is weeping – thanksgiving, love …
She is drying His feet with her hair
She only anoints His feet after the washing – all of the offering belonged to Jesus
She is presenting Jesus with pure, unadulterated worship!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally we arrive at that place where the Word of God always takes us if we are truly seeking the truth and that place is where we ask ourselves …
What about me?
What if I were reclining at that dinner table and I see such an act of worship taking place?
Would I react like the Pharisee?
Would I sit there looking down my nose at Jesus and the sinful woman?
Would I be thinking about my self-righteousness and how much more holy I am than her?
Would I be like the disciples?
Feigning concern for the poor that I had never shown before?
Would my desire for wealth and material possessions be totally blinding me to the beautiful act of worship that was being shown to Jesus?
Or, would I have thought, “I want to be like her”?
Let’s think about the “sinful woman’s” future
No hope for a husband
Life savings gone
Most likely abandoned by what family she did have
What are her actions saying in the dinner with the Pharisees?
She is saying, “Here it is Lord Jesus. Here is my life. I have nothing left but You. I have abandoned and cast aside everything for You. I don’t care what people say, I only care what You say. I don’t care what people think, I only care what you think. So, if I die penniless, starved, kicked into the gutter as a sub-human animal, that’s OK, Jesus, because I have you.”
In the church world we love numbers, we love buildings, basically, we love boasting.
What church on the district had the largest attendance?
What church raised the most money?
What church has the largest building that can seat the most?
“It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.1”
? Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
I love the Crossroads Church. I love the way it is and I hope it changes.
What if we at Crossroads became like the woman known as the “sinful woman” who had been forgiven and saved by the grace of Jesus?
What if our lives were to become recklessly abandoned to God and people got saved by the boatload?
What if we were stretched to the limit?
Would we build a bigger church? Or would we care for the poor here and around the world?
What if by the power of the Holy Spirit and our reckless obedience to Him and love for Him we grew to 500 people?
Would we spend $5,000,000 over the next ten years to build a new facility so we could all meet together and not know each other?
What would another option be? What other option would be more like Mary’s offering?
What if we held 7 services here each weekend in this same facility with 72 people in each service?
And what if over the next 10 years instead of spending $5 million on a new facility we sent $2.5 million to overseas missions to save and care for the lost?
And what if we sent another $2.5 million to the Salvation Army or some other established Christian rescue organization to care for and reach the lost here in the US?
One would be exciting and the world would notice.
One would be back breaking and sacrificial and Jesus would notice.
Which would be more like the “sinful woman”?
Closing comments and prayer
------- Extra Unused Material --------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you want to be so in love with Jesus that you will live for Him and worship Him with reckless abandon?
Are you so humbled by Jesus that you realize that your self-righteousness is actually sinfulness?
Do you want to be so in love with Jesus that all of your possessions are deeded over to Jesus for His use no matter how valuable they may be in the eyes of the world.
Is it possible to care enough about Jesus that you just don’t care if everyone in the room is watching your worship of Jesus?
What’s interesting is that in other parts of the Gospel Jesus is asked why He doesn’t observe the traditions of the Pharisees and here the Pharisees are not showing the common courtesies that should be shown to any guest entering a home.
Right before the account in Luke Jesus has proclaimed a teaching about John the Baptist which was well received by the common listeners but rejected by the Pharisees because they did not recognize John’s authority and so they had never been baptized by John the Baptist.
Mary is anointing Jesus in anticipation of His burial
The disciples definitely do NOT want Jesus to die but to redeem Israel from Rome.
The Pharisees may very well been looking forward to Jesus’ death with anticipation.
If this man were a prophet – He is more than a prophet
He can recognize true faith
He knows the intent of the heart
He can forgive sin
He can pronounce salvation
Jesus took the time to explain to the Pharisee why he was wrong
The “sinful woman” was totally out-of-bounds
She gave up massive worldly wealth
She touched a man who was not her husband or close relative
She humbled herself before those who had no use for her
Her thankfulness brought her to tears
She took down her hair in public
The Pharisee was looking down on Jesus in terms of status and utterly had no use for the woman.
The woman had reckless gratitude and love for Jesus and that gratitude and love for Jesus totally overrode her concern about what the Pharisee thought about her.
