Theme: Doing a good work for Christ
Text: 1 Chron. 29:10-18; Romans 12:1-8; Mark 14:3-9
Thanksgiving is a very important aspect of our lives and always results in blessing. Every one of us has a reason to be thankful because every one of us has been blessed. Today we want to remember our many blessings and say thank you in an appropriate way by doing a good work for Christ. We do not have any excuse not to give because all of us have something valuable to give to the Lord. There are many different kinds of giving in the Scriptures and these include the giving of our time, our money, and our possessions. In fact, giving is the hallmark of the Christian faith and the Bible itself is a book on giving. In it we are told of how God gave life to man, how He created the world for him and gave him dominion over every other creature. In it we are told of how God gave man a home in the Garden of Eden and, when man fell, He gave him a promise of redemption. In it we are told of how God gave the Israelites the Law to make them aware of sin and how He gave His greatest gift to us, His Son Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin and give us eternal life. In it we are told of how God has given us the Church to nurture the believer and bring him to spiritual maturity. In fact the very essence of Christianity is about giving. The cross, the symbol of our faith speaks of giving. It was the place where God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. The Bible is also the story of man giving back to God. Cain and Abel brought gifts to God. When Noah got off the ark, he gave an offering to God. The Jews gave tithes and free-will offerings to God. And the church is to give. “Let every one of you lay by in store as God has prospered him" (I Corinthians 16:2). As Christians we give out of love for God. He loved us first, has done so much for us and continues to do so much for us. The more we understand that, the greater our love for Him becomes. And if we really loved Him, we would do everything for Him. Mary really loved Jesus Christ. She loved Him because He first loved her and had done many things in her life. She loved Him so much that she did what many present thought was a foolish thing. She gave her best to Christ. In the same way Christ has done so much for us. He gave His life for the Church and as a Church we should be a fellowship of believers, doing a good work for Christ.
Christ can only be served in the appropriate way when we have a relationship with Him - when we give ourselves to Him and are committed to Him. Jesus demonstrated what commitment is by coming to earth to restore our broken relationship with God. A commitment to a relationship leads to service and Jesus did not come to earth to be served, but to serve. A Church committed to a relationship with Christ is called to serve. We are called to use our time, our talents, and our resources to serve the Church and to serve others. We are all called to give ourselves as a source of help to the kingdom of God. We can only do this when we use what we have to glorify God.
There are many villages and towns in the Middle East but a small village by the name of Bethany near Jerusalem is known all over the world because of Mary’s commitment to Jesus Christ. God’s children are precious in His sight and their presence makes towns and countries famous in His sight. It was in this town that we first learn of Mary’s commitment to Christ. On one particular occasion Jesus was at the home of Mary and Martha. While Martha was busy catering for Him and His disciples, Mary sat down at the Lord’s feet to listen to what He was teaching His disciples. Mary by her action showed where her interest lay and used every opportunity to learn from Christ to meet her spiritual needs. Martha, however, was more interested in meeting physical needs - the demands of the flesh. Realising that she could not influence Mary to leave what she was doing, she appealed to Jesus for help. Jesus gently told her that Mary had chosen what was really necessary and that was to follow Him. God has chosen each one of us be a part of His family and the least we can do is to follow Him and be committed to Him. He has given each and everyone one of us certain gifts and certain talents that He expects to be used in a way that shows our commitment to Him. God has placed us at this time in this community and in this Church for a reason. He has placed within each and every one of us a special or unique gift to use to glorify the kingdom of God. What are we doing with our gifts to glorify God in our Church? Has God not placed us here for a time like this? Commitment is demonstrated in actions and nothing is too little for the Lord to use. When a little boy gave his meal of two fish and five loaves of bread to the Lord it was used to glorify Him. He was glorified as He fed five thousand people excluding women and children. It does not matter what it is we have to give. Each and every one of us has something that we can give to help the Church. If you are musically talented then help in the music department and lead in praise and worship. If you have a lot of knowledge of the Bible join the Bible study leaders and teach the Word of God. If God has blessed you financially be a financial blessing to the Church. We should not worry about what we have to give. Whatever it is, God will bless and use it to glorify His name.
Giving is not only a test of commitment to Christ but also a test of one’s level of spiritual maturity. Is there any better way to evaluate our spiritual condition than by the way we use the resources God has given us? An indicator of our spiritual condition is our level of giving – giving our time, our money, our relationships, our opportunities, our material possessions, our gifts, our abilities, and our energy for God’s Kingdom. There is a direct link between our use of God’s resources and our spiritual condition. The vision of the Covenant Church is all about our use of God’s resources. It is all about the commitment of time, commitment of money and commitment of self. The only way we will be able to accomplish this vision is if we are spiritually grounded and rooted and alive in Jesus Christ. If we are going to be the church God has called us to be, then we must be willing to give not just some of ourselves but all of ourselves to Christ. Paul understood this and demands it of the Christian life. He tells us in Romans 12, “in view of God’s mercy, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is our spiritual act of worship.” We are to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice.
Prior to this possibility animals were killed before being offered as sacrifices. Jesus Christ then came as a perfect, final sacrifice, and on the cross, He died for our sins. Jesus Christ was the final substitute for our sin. There was therefore no longer any need for a animal sacrifices or dead sacrifices. That’s why Paul says in Romans 8, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus!” Therefore Paul says, in view of God’s mercy – in view of Jesus dying to offer His body as a sacrifice, now we ought to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. In other words, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, God has given us eternal life. Therefore, says Paul, the Christian should give his life back to God as a living sacrifice. But sometimes what we offer God is a dead sacrifice. A dead sacrifice is when we offer something to God that does not result from the life of Christ in us. It is like when we come to church just because that is what we do on Sundays. God cannot be happy with such an attitude. Or we give money to the cause of Christ yet are not alive to the work of Christ. God wants a living sacrifice. He wants us to give out of the overflow of His life that is in us. He wants us to give out of a deep desire to give. A living sacrifice is an offering that flows out of an abundant life in Christ. Each person here today is special and unique before God. God has put something in each one of us that we have to offer to others and to offer back to Him. What we expect of God will in a large way influence how we relate to each other as well as to what God requires of us. Our giving is a test of spiritual maturity. Are we using what God has blessed us with to serve Him? Or are we expecting others to do the work of reaching others for Christ? Do we expect others to pay for the work of the church? Some of us are expecting Jesus to return almost any day. What answer will we give him for the way we have used what He’s entrusted to us.
When God decided to save the world, He gave His one and only Son to die for our sins. God’s love resulted in His giving everything and there is an easy test to see how much people love God. It is by how much they are prepared to give to Him. Giving is a response to God’s love. Mary took the most precious thing that she possessed and used it all on Jesus. She gave her precious perfume to Christ because of what He had done for her. Jesus had treated her with dignity and respect. He had shared with her secrets of the kingdom of God. So she wanted to give Jesus something to let him know how much she loved Him.
What Mary did showed her total devotion to Christ. She not only poured the perfume on His head as recorded in Mark but also on His feet and then wiped them with her hair as recorded in John. It was an act of such devotion and worship. When Mary anointed Jesus, she wasn’t looking for a place in the spotlight. She wasn’t trying to win the applause of the crowd. What she did was done because of her overwhelming love for the Lord. But her act made her name immortal. In fact, had she performed this deed in order to be remembered, she doubtless would have been forgotten, because the Bible is not given to preserving the names of those who seek the spotlight? But Jesus assured Mary of a permanent place in history because she performed a deed of such selfless love. He told her that she would never be forgotten for wherever this gospel is preached throughout the whole world, what she did will also be spoken of as a memorial to her. When the world has forgotten her, then it will also have forgotten the story of him who was bruised for our iniquities and wounded for our transgressions. Can we also not be like Mary - less logical and more generous, less analytic and more compassionate, less self-centred and more Christ-centred, less concerned about what somebody might think or say and more anxious to honour the one who first loved us. Love always seems wasteful to those who don’t love. Judas had witnessed an action of love and he called it extravagant waste. So much depends upon one’s point of view. One’s outlook is determined by what is inside of him. Judas never really saw the gift Mary gave to Jesus that night. The fact that he tried to put a price tag on it proves that he never really saw it. If he had seen the real gift Mary gave to Jesus that night, he would have known it was priceless. Judas’ preoccupation with the cost of the perfume was the basic flaw in this man’s character that led him within a few days to make his bargain for the blood of Jesus. Those who criticise giving to the Lord are normally very miserable. Those who criticised Mary’s action did not even enjoy the perfume. The whole house was filled with this fragrant, beautiful perfume and they were so angry and critical that they could not even enjoy it.
Our offerings are a litmus test of our relationship with God. It is not really what we say about Him with our lips but how we feel about Him with our offerings that matter. Our commitment to Christ is best expressed by our contributions to Him. Mary did a beautiful thing – she did what she could. God never asks us to do more than we can. But are we doing what we can? What Mary did was the greatest thing she could do for Christ at the time. None of the disciples really believed that Jesus was going to die and be buried at that time. Yet, Mary had the revelation that He was to die and be buried. Because there was no embalming among the Israelites, burial was within hours after a death. The body would be washed, perfumed, and laid to rest. When Jesus died on the cross there was not enough time to properly anoint His body for burial because of the onset of the Sabbath. They had to hurriedly wrap Him in sheets and put some perfume and spices on the body, but they could not do the real anointing. When they returned after the Sabbath to complete the burial rites, His body was no longer there. They had missed the opportunity to anoint His body. But because Mary was open to the Holy Spirit, He could tell her something because He could speak to her heart. He led her to anoint Jesus’ body for burial. Christians ought to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit as Mary was. We need to worship Christ with the devotion that Mary did. If God so loved us that He sent His only Son to die in our place to give us life, should we not, in view of God’s mercy, offer our bodies as living sacrifices to Him. God’s love resulted in His giving everything. There is an easy test to see how much people love God: it is by how much they are prepared to give to God. Jesus Christ paid the price for our redemption with His blood. All the money in the world couldn’t have purchased it. Not only that Jesus has sent us the Holy Spirit. We have been blessed and we need to also be a blessing. Mary did something that will never be our privilege to do. We’ll never have the opportunity to perform the intimate, physical, personal service to our Lord that she performed. Such service is no longer possible because Jesus is in heaven. But we can do something for His body, His people on earth, the Church. Whenever we do something for another person or for His Church, our action is accepted as if we did it for Him. We have some tremendous challenges and needs before us and there are so many things we’d like to accomplish. But whether we meet those challenges and fulfil those needs may well depend on whether or not we’re willing to break our alabaster jar for our Lord. Amen!
