Opening illustration: Some of us may feel pressured to be perfect when we go to church so that people will think well of us. Metaphorically speaking, we work hard to make sure we have every hair in place. But a healthy church is a place where we can let down our hair and not hide our flaws behind a façade of perfection. In church, we should be able to reveal our weaknesses to find strength rather than conceal our faults to appear strong.
Worship can be an intensely personal and yet very corporate experience. We can worship alone, with a small group of friends, and with our local body of believers. Some of us dance, others raise their hands, some close their eyes and bow heads in reverence. There are many ways in which we can praise and worship God.
Worship doesn’t involve behaving as if nothing is wrong; it’s making sure everything is right—right with God and with one another. When our greatest fear is letting down our hair, perhaps our greatest sin is keeping it up.
Introduction: Shortly before Jesus was crucified, a woman named Mary poured a bottle of expensive perfume on His feet. Then, in what may have been an even more daring act, she wiped His feet with her hair (John 12:3). Not only did Mary sacrifice what may have been her life’s savings, she also sacrificed her reputation. In first-century Middle Eastern culture, respectable women never let down their hair in public. But true worship is not concerned about what others think of us (2 Samuel 6:21–22). To worship Jesus, Mary was willing to be thought of as immodest, and in another text, perhaps even immoral.
Mary offered her financial stability—pouring a very expensive perfume over Jesus, her physical being—using her own hair to wipe His feet, and her reputation—letting hair down was not something a “respectable” woman did in ancient cultures. Mary worshiped Jesus with everything she had. She knew who Jesus was and what He had done for her (He had just raised her brother from the dead; see John 11). Her worship was a response.
That’s what worship is—responding to who Jesus is and what He has done. How do you worship? How can you share your worship with another?
How can we worship God out-of-the-box?
1. Sacrificial worship
A key principle of worship is that it costs you something. It is impossible to worship Jesus and leave the same way you came. You may say, "Well, I come here all the time and I don't always leave changed." You can come to a worship service and leave the same way you came, but you cannot come and worship Jesus and leave unchanged. There was an old song: “I don't know what you came to do, but I came to praise the Lord.”
It will cost you to worship Jesus, and that cost is change. Sometimes, Jesus calls us to change how or where we spend our money. Sometimes it is a monetary change in our lives. The disciples here are worried about the monetary value of the perfume Mary pours on the feet of Jesus. They see it as wasteful, while she and Jesus view it as the cost of worship.
Sometimes it will cost you your pride as Jesus calls you to humble yourself and follow Him more closely. This was Mary's house. She was not to take the role of a servant and wash her guest's feet. However, she was willing to sacrifice her pride to worship Jesus.
Sometimes it will cost you time as Jesus calls you to serve Him. Maybe it will cost you something of yourself as it did with Mary. She used her tears as water. It cost Mary her glory, as she took her hair, what the Bible says was a woman's glory, and used it as a towel to dry the feel of Jesus.
The disciples are upset about the cost of the perfume but do not miss that Mary is paying a high price for following Jesus, and that price is more than just money.
You and I come to worship God this morning. What will it cost you to worship Him? In other parts of the world this morning, gathering to worship Jesus may cost them their lives, but those dear saints are willing to pay the price. It could cost some of them their business and financial support as they would be boycotted and abandoned in their villages and towns.
So often we reduce the price we pay to worship Jesus as the amount we put in the offering plate when it comes by. Certainly, the offering you give is an act of worship and sacrifice, but there is so much more to it than that. It costs us personally, in pride, humility, service, and so many other ways.
If you believe the only sacrifice you have to make is financial, you are making concessions to God. You are paying a price for what you believe will keep Him off your back. That doesn't build a relationship, that doesn't build dependence, that doesn't recognize His generosity, and that's not worship. It will cost us our reputation, our financial stability, our job and even at times our relationships with family and friends. Are we willing to go all the way or it will cost us our anointing!
Nothing there moved the heart of Jesus except the sacrifice of this woman and her response in worship to her Savior. Young men, are you trying to impress the heart of some young lady or young women, are you trying to impress a young man, or Are you really moving the heart of God? Only your brokenness in worship will do it.
2. Significant worship
The purpose of worship is to exalt Christ. For you and I to be reminded of His commandments, His love, His might, His power, and of His return. Worship that exalts Christ happens through music, sermons, prayers, drama, poetry, readings, visual images, and other ways. The importance is not the form of worship, but the object of worship. The method of worship will never surpass the purpose of worship, and if it does, then you are no longer worshiping Christ. You are worshiping a style of worship, the act of worship, or the individual leading worship.
Notice that the people around Mary do not approve of her style of worship. They think she is behaving irrationally. When has love ever been rational? They are focused upon the style of her worship, the instruments of her worship, and not the one she is worshiping.
Folks, we need to quit worrying about what others think. There are a lot of churches today that have altered their worship services so as to "not be offensive to the lost." How ridiculous! Worship is not for the lost because they don't know the One we worship. Worship is the song of the redeemed, sung to the Redeemer. It is the praise of the saints to the One who has made them Holy. It is something we do for God's pleasure, without respect of what others might think of us or how they might judge us.
Mary did not put Jesus on her day timer, she did not have to schedule some time in her otherwise busy day specifically to honor Jesus. She did it when the opportunity presented itself. She was ready and eager to honor Him and was thus able to do so at a moment's notice. While others around here were serving food or simply enjoying our Lord's company, Mary was absorbed in worship.
God wants our love and our worship to be spontaneous; He wants us to be passionate about honoring and loving Him; He wants it to become a magnificent obsession. While there are many good things about solemn and formalized worship, that which comes as a natural response to our love for Him is usually most heart-felt. The honor Mary gave to Jesus was authentic and natural. She honored Jesus when the opportunity was at hand.
That's what I love about Mary. She doesn't care what others think, she doesn't care how public it is, or how much it might humiliate her. She is there to worship Jesus and she doesn't let anyone get in her way.
Jesus pulls them back to the purpose of worship. He says, "you will not always have Me with you." Worship recognizes the presence of Jesus. It celebrates not only what He has done and who He is, but His presence with us.
Mary understood the purpose of worship. After all, here they were in Bethany, the place where Lazarus, her brother had died, and Jesus had brought him back from the dead. If anybody had a reason to worship Jesus, it was Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
But this raises and interesting questions, where is Lazarus, or Martha for that matter? Well Lazarus is at the table and Martha is serving the meal. I think that might be a picture of the church. Some people are worshiping, some are criticizing, some are there to be served and others are wrapped up in activity.
What about those people who think worship ought to be about them? They arrive at the table of worship every Sunday and expect to be fed. I am worried that there are those people who show up at church and have an attitude of "touch me if you can." They come to the table to be fed, but offer little in return. They will spend more at the movies this week than they will give. They will get up for a 8:00 am coffee time, but cannot make it to the 9:45 am worship service. For them worship is about convenience, and they reject the sacrificial nature of worship.
There is another group, so busy behind the scenes that they don't or won't slow down to worship. Their detailed and frantic actions hide their lack of worship. They serve in many, many ways but are not growing or do not care to grow. These are people like Martha who are on committees, or are Sunday School teachers, or deacons, or sing in the choir, or help in youth ministry or children's ministry, or deliver meals to shut ins. There is nothing wrong with what they are doing, but they have come to believe that their actions are synonymous with worship. This is a dangerous place for preachers, staff members, and key leaders. A preacher can believe that all the time he spends studying and preparing a sermon can replace his quiet time.
Remember worship is about exalting Christ, and if you come to the table and expect it to all be about what you want and how you want it, you are the focus of your worship. If you are so busy with activity that you cannot worship, you and your activity are the focus of your worship.
3. Sustaining worship
One of the amazing things about this encounter between Mary and Jesus is the lingering reminder. As she wiped the perfume from His feet, she infused the perfume into her hair. As she left, the smell of that perfume went with her. I think that is such a beautiful picture of worship and its lingering effects.
Some of the most powerful moments of spiritual growth in my life are connected to a worship experience. Some of those moments happened in a church setting where a song or message was exactly what I needed at that moment. Some of those moments were when I was praying and realized in a profound way, and I was in the presence of Christ and He spoke to me. Other times I was studying Scripture either with a group or on my own, and the Holy Spirit lifted the words off the page and drove them into my heart. Those were powerful times of spiritual growth because I was in the presence of Jesus.
But what makes those times even more essential in my spiritual growth is that their effects linger. For example, when I try to be somebody I am not, I am carried back to the evangelical crusade where God made it clear to me, that he was calling me to serve Him, and not my version of somebody else. When life gets frantic and I wonder how I will get everything done, I remember how a Bible study taught me that it is His church and He will build it. I remember the incredible worship experienced tied to my call to ministry. I remember when He broke my heart because I did not love the people in my church like I should.
I could go on and on and on. The fragrance of each of those worship experiences lingers with me. Like memorizing Scripture, they are there when I arrive at a similar situation. They remind me of what I have learned or mistakes not to make again. The worship did not end when I walked away.
So, our worship must be sacrificial, it must be significant, and it has a sustaining effect.
Application: Henry Blackaby and Ron Owens did a study on worship several years ago. In the final chapter of that book, they ask the question "What would happen if we returned to worship?" They point out several key points, our willingness to go and serve as missionaries, evangelists, and witnesses would increase. Our giving financially would soar. The unity and commitment to the cause of Christ would grow and be strengthened. (Henry Blackaby and Ron Owens, Worship: Believers Experiencing God, LifeWay Press, Nashville TN, 2001.)
Worship is not the time between 9:30 am and noon on Sundays. It is a way of life. The church is not a building, it is the people. We are people called to worship Christ every day of the week, to sacrifice in our worship, to make worship a significant portion of our lives, and to understand that worship sustains us. So, this morning, are you a critic, an overactive individual, a self-focused consumer, or a grateful worshiper at the feet of Jesus? You may have come one of those ways this morning, and that is okay. You may even worship God out-of-the-box but the real question is how will you leave from here?
