Extravagant Worship

The Plot to Seize Jesus at Passover

Now the Passover and unleavened bread were two days away and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize him by stealth. And kill him. For they were saying not during the festival. Otherwise, there might be a riot of the people.

While he was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper and reclining at the table There came a woman with an alabaster vial a very costly perfume of pure nard and she broke the vial and poured it over his head.

But some were indignantly remarking to one another. Why has this perfume been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for over 300 Nari and the money given to the poor and they were scolding her.

But Jesus said let her alone. Why do you bother her? She's done a good deed to me. For you always have the poor with you and whenever you wish you can do good to them, but you do not always have it. Have me.

She has done what she could she's anointed my body beforehand for the burial. Truly I say to you wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world. What this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.

Then Judas Iscariot who was one of the twelve went off to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. They were glad when they heard this and promised to give him money and he began Begun seeking how to betray him at an opportune time.

Mark’s Sandwich Structure and the Three Groups in the Passage

Well, good morning. It's.

It's a fun week to come off of all of that discourse and to to turn back I think into the main road and what we saw last week was that judgment is sure for those who would. Who would betray the Lord who would kill God's Son those who would be covenant breakers and an adulterous generation?

And we saw last week the smoke of judgment that was surely coming. And this week at the beginning of this chapter It doesn't get much better and we start to see a pattern and if you haven't seen it Hopefully I can make it clear and you'll never miss it again in Mark.

Mark likes to write in sandwiches, right? So so what he's got here is in this passage. He's got two really awful moldy disgusting pieces of bread with the most beautiful polished greatest Meat in the middle of it that you can imagine.

So this sandwich you wouldn't want to eat it but the middle of it is going to be everlasting and talked about forever and I think what can be missed in the in the simple reading of the text this morning is the intimacy that drives the Application and drives the pointedness of this section and that is this.

We have basically three groups of people. We have the scheming leaders. Who should know they have studied the scriptures. It is their job and their profession to study the scriptures and so they will not have missed the prophecies.

They will not have missed who the coming Messiah was going to be as he checks off prophecy after prophecy. These these scribes and chief priests would have known and they don't care. They don't care at all because they are judicially blinded by God but also they are rebellious in their heart and they are the subject of what the Lord talked about in the Olivet Discourse and Then we have this family.

Particularly the woman who pours the jar out which would have been a family heirloom. But as John illuminates that this is a family that was very close to Jesus. It was a family that knew him well. And so the sacrifice takes on a different dimension to us when we think about what is it?

Like when you give the greatest thing you own to someone, you know. Very well your best friend and then we have the betrayer. Who is nestled amongst the disciples who is the leaven in the loaf? And he tries to leaven pretty hard in the in the passage that we read this morning and that gives us some application about the church and the constant struggle of Those who have come in amongst us who are not of us and the constant problem That we face on this side of heaven in the church.

The Scheming Leaders, the Government, and Caiaphas’s Prophecy

So let's get started and we're gonna deal first with the scheming leaders. I Don't want to talk a lot about them. We know them well, but they show their hands here. Finally. The plan is ripening and the plan is not to try to Destroy Jesus character.

The plan is they've tried that right? That's what we've seen with the questions that they have no nothing else to ask Jesus because he's made them look stupid at every turn. They they think they've got him caught and then he turns the guns on them and makes them look ignorant.

And they're they're done with that so now what they want to do is they want to sneak around in the cover of night and they want to kill Jesus and They involve the most powerful religious figure of the day in their plan.

That would be the high priest Caiaphas. So they're meeting in secret like creepy weirdos and they want to destroy they want to kill the Son of God and Here's the bad part. They know. They know who he is and they don't care.

Because their power in their position and their religion and their temple is more important than the Son of God to them. These are covenant breakers. These are an adulterous generation. These are the culmination of the parable of the vineyard and these are the men who are going to kill The vineyard owner's son who has come to them.

There's not much good to say about them. But in order to set this up there is some interesting time stuff and what we have to understand is that there is a passage Here that we're dealing with about this woman about this plot and it is detailed in three different places in Scripture.

One of them is very easy to see that it's a parallel passage. Matthew 26 Reads very similarly to the verses that we heard this morning. But John 12 is also the same story. But John 12 has some difficulty to it.

And I think that that's going to give us a lot of insight when we get to the worshiping woman. But there's a lot of timeline stuff. So what we have to understand let's put ourselves in Jerusalem here.

Jerusalem was a city that would have been about 50 to 60 thousand people living there. But during the Passover week, there would be half a million people in Jerusalem. So just think about that think about the logistics of a town the roads the storefronts the lodging.

That's used to having 50 ,000 people in and now there's ten times that number in the city. It would have been a crazy place. It would have been bustling. It would have been difficult. You would have had been waiting for everything.

And so he puts us here at two days before the Passover. Look, I may not be good with numbers anymore this week. I was kind of warping my brain trying to understand this. Here's here's the simple part.

This night when this is happening is likely the Wednesday night of the week and then next next week. We will go on Thursday night, which is going to be the Passover meal. Okay, and so in timeline the difficulty with John is that John says this is all happening six days before and then he fast Forwards to this event in Simon the leper's house, and then he backtracks to the triumphal entry.

Okay, and there's a lot of stuff in the Gospels where that's happening because they are not primarily telling a chronological history. What they're doing is they are telling a story and they are putting the facts in as it fits their narrative and what they want.

To emphasize that's important. And I thought I should say it it gave me fits. Because what I thought is if I read John 12 and I think is this the same event because it doesn't seem like the times. Right.

It is the same event. It is the same event. So these priests and scribes they are going to do something that is classically happening that we should watch for it. We've seen it in our lifetime. We've seen it within the last decade the enemies of Christ their best weapon to use against the people of God is the government and The reason they want to do that is because the government is the highest expression of human power.

The government wields the sword and so if you want to shut someone up the only entity that can kill Without having it come back on them with criminal penalty is the government. All right. So what the scribes and the chief priests want to do is they want to get the government involved in this?

Because of several reasons. Number one, there's not going to be backlash of vigilante ISM against Rome. That's really important. So right now they don't just take Jesus and put him under show trial right now because there's 500 ,000 people in the city and it could easily cause a riot and then have Rome come in and crush them.

Because Rome does not want to put up with riots in Jerusalem. So what they want to do is they want to use Rome? To do their dirty work so that there can't be any any backpedaling for them. There can't be a backlash from what's going on.

The other thing is that if the government is to kill Jesus it causes confusion in the minds of his followers. We saw this so distinctly five years ago. Did we not that when the government starts to issue commands even if those commands are contra scripture?

What happens is in the body and in the church? It causes tremendous confusion and it causes even more confusion when people who are supposedly preaching God's Word. Start to go along with the government mandates and then Christians do things that they never would have thought they would do.

Because there is confusion and darkness. And so this is really a smart plan to use the government. They have been careful and tidy. This is going to be first-degree murder not a crime of passion. They are planning their steps tightly and it and also with this confusion with this lack of a backlash.

It also Destroys they hope the legitimacy of Jesus's reputation. See this guy is a criminal. He got killed by the Romans because he's a criminal and they think that it will disperse his influence. Yet God is using the whole thing and we know it's it's an amazing text in John.

Along these lines because Caiaphas says he prophesies that one man should die for the many. Right, but why it's interesting. He says that the death of Christ for his nation will be so that all of God's people would be gathered.

Now that's very interesting and it doesn't work the way Caiaphas thought it was gonna work. It works exactly the opposite way because the problem that Caiaphas has is he still thinks that the people of God are Ethno-nationalist Israel from the physical lineage of Abraham and the problem is that's not true.

And I hope I demonstrate last week. It was never true. It was always the spiritual people of God of faith. It was by faith that Abraham was accounted righteousness. And so when Caiaphas prophesied this it is very true that the death of Christ is going to bring all God's people together, right?

It's gonna bring us together in unity where we will worship Jesus Christ forever. And there will be no more confusion about the old world and the old covenant because a new covenant comes in and that covenant is.

Better.

See these murderers they are afraid. But don't give them a pass even though they're afraid they're afraid of the crowds. They're afraid of the mob. There's something much more than fear in their minds and that is that they are envious and they are angry.

They are very angry and they want to kill the Lord now in contrast to that. We have this plot and we saw the sentencing for the crime that's about to happen last week. And now we see the plot of the crime and as Mark 14 plays out We're going to see the build-up and then the actual crime the high crime of killing God.

Mary’s Extravagant Worship and the Costly Alabaster Jar

Now we turn the page and we see the worship of this woman. Verse 3 says and while he was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper and reclining at the table there came a woman with an alabaster jar of perfume a Very costly pure nard and she broke the jar and poured it over his head.

We know from John 12 Remarkably that this woman is Mary Magdalene. That breaks the alabaster jar and pours it over Jesus's head. Now that is interesting for many reasons. And I hope to go through them here.

There's a lot going on in this passage. One is you would expect that they would be staying with Lazarus. Which is where they are largely staying in Bethany. But he is in the home of this Simon the leper and we see that Jesus has gone to be with friends.

He's with his closest friends, but he's also in the house of the Simon the leper. We don't know who he is. There's a lot of speculation about it. He's probably somebody that Jesus has healed. That's along the ministry and his friends with Christ.

But in this instance in this instance Jesus is in the home of those who are familiar with him and that makes it different because in Mark over and over again We've seen these acts of worship with the blind men with men who were Exercised of their demons with people who are healed of sicknesses and over and over again.

These people had faith while the people that were closest to Jesus had partial blindness, right the disciples over and over again. They don't really see it clearly, but the people around Jesus who is healing they see him as God and they have total faith in him.

So now we start to see a pivot. Because we are getting to the fulcrum of history in Mark the most important event that has ever happened and So now we see Jesus's closest friends. See him for who he is.

Now Mary has a backstory and Mary's backstory is that Jesus has risen her brother from the grave. He has walked with them. She knows him. Well, so why is she not named to Mark? Well, the speculation is this is that Mark is written in an earlier date and that giving away her identity would be very dangerous for Her in the circulation and so as John writes later that danger has passed.

Because likely she has passed or she is in old age and beyond the danger. And so she's named in John and I think that it's very important because you think of it this way. We lose something in translation this alabaster jar of perfume this perfume that came from India Was on the shelf and this jar itself would have been expensive and this would have been a fairly family heirloom.

This would have been the most expensive valuable thing that this family owned. So would you imagine the setup. I have friends that hang out with me every other Thursday night. They're my close friends.

They're they're they're dear friends of mine. And I try to imagine what the situation would be where I would take out the most valuable thing I own in my home and just pour it out on the ground for them.

We don't have stuff like that. Right see my heirlooms are for my son right and my daughters. My friends are different. But in this case, what happens is Mary even though she knows she's has walked with him.

She sees him for who he is and that's what's crucial about this passage. She sees him as her king and she does something that is absolutely unbelievable. She takes the most valuable thing her family possesses and she cracks open the jar ruining it forever and pours 12 ounces.

Of the most expensive perfume that she can imagine. It's worth a year's wages a Year of work. This is what your treasure is as your family to pass down and she overcome with love for her Savior. Pours it over his head.

Quickly, what would you do that? If you had this perfume. Would you just dump it all out or would you be like putting a little bit of a dose on there? Right spraying, you know. Have the women do put it a little bit on your wrist and I don't this is apparently the zone of smell and that sort Of thing.

No, that's not what she does she pours the whole thing over his head to the extent that it runs all the way down his body onto his feet and then John tells us that what she does is she gets down with her hair and she rubs the ointment the oil off of his feet.

With her hair in many ways. She she humbles herself. She has not only poured out an Unbelievably expensive family heirloom and used it forever. But she's also knelt down before her Lord and she's washed his feet.

Unbelievable it's an unbelievable thing that she does and See Jesus sees it and says that this will be spoken of everywhere that his gospel is spoken of forever. Do you understand what this means? We will be talking about this story in glory and we are talking about it this morning 2 ,000 years after it happened.

It is written in Holy Scripture and she did things that she didn't even know. So what does Mary know? She knows that he is God. She knows that he is her salvation. She knows that he is more valuable than anything that she has in the house.

She knows that if she gives him her entire allegiance in her entire love that he is her king. She bows the knee. Both figuratively and literally she bows the knee to her king, but she also doesn't know some things.

She prepares him for his burial. She couldn't have known that unless she was listening closer. But I don't think so. We don't get much indication of that. She prepares him for his burial because God is doing things in this section that the people involved don't know with Caiaphas.

God is speaking through Caiaphas in his anger and bitterness of heart. God speaks through Caiaphas the judgment on God's own son that's going to be carried through to usher in this new covenant. Amazing that God is riding on the hearts of his enemies his very prophecy that's going to bring about this change in all history.

But meanwhile, he is also giving symbolism that she prepares him for burial with this very expensive ointment. That would be delaying the smell and preparing his body. But also she pours the oil on his head which should recall first Samuel 15.

It's a kingly anointing. It's a kingly anointing and as this is told remember that the gospel is the good news of the coming King. It's the good news of the king that he comes to make peace through war.

Except that the war that Jesus fought was the war against sin and death and Satan and he won that war with his own blood not the blood of his enemies and. So when Jesus came to make war He was the king who brought peace.

He is the Prince of Peace who brings peace for all eternity. And in the in the mix of this with the Preparation for burial with the anointing of the oil over the head with the sacrifice and the pure worship.

It also shows that worship of Jesus is central to the gospel. The gospel is a word that has been watered down in our day. We know I I think I'd mentioned them last week. So I hate to do it again the gospel coalition for a time made everything a gospel issue.

Everything this movie is a gospel issue. Race is the gospel issue. The president's a gospel issue and when everything is a gospel issue to quote the Incredibles. Nothing is a gospel issue. That's an issue.

I won't say that again. The gospel is very simple, right? The gospel is the coming of the king. It was his good news that he brought peace that he made war and defeated his enemies but then the heart of the gospel is that because he is the king and Because he has secured our salvation with atonement and with his blood that we worship him.

There is no gospel without worship. It's really simple. It's really simple. And so what she does is she heralds the gospel because she worships and today We have to understand that there is no change in life without worship we become what we worship.

This is the means by which we are sanctified. We know because John writes in his letter in first John that we will be perfected in glory. Why. Because we will behold the face of Jesus. Is it just going to be seeing Jesus face?

That's all. No, no sin anymore.

No.

It's because we're going to love Jesus and we're gonna see him in all of his beauty and all of his glory and the first thing the furthest thing that would Ever come to our mind is to sin against our king and our God.

Because we're going to love him. We're gonna behold him as he is and we will sin no more. It's because the object of affection in our heart is going to be Christ and we are going to be made like him. From one degree to another we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

That is not ethereal spiritualized language. What that means is that as we love Christ more as we worship him more sincerely in spirit and truth we become more like him and Friends that should point the guns in the church that we see today and we need to remember that in this place.

That is we grow more and more like him because we love him. Then we will act more and more like him and we will love the brothers. We must and we're gonna see the attack on this at the end of the sandwich today.

There's an attack on love for one another. See Jesus responds to this act of love with love himself and He gives Mary honor. Worship is not temporal. Worship is the thing that we do here that lasts. It's the most important thing that we involve ourselves in we know it.

It's the it's the first one right? What is the reason for our existence? Why would we create it? This is not a difficult existential question. Though the philosophers would like to make it one the chief end of man and why we are created is to glorify God because he Is due that honor we are his workmanship.

He has made us and he has given us his image and what that image is to do is to reflect his goodness and his grace through all creation. Worship is heavenly. It's not temporal. We make spiritual friends in heaven.

We grow in our Christ likeness through our worship. But there's a bad part to this for us and in America. It's been difficult for us because worship requires sacrifice and it always has. If you sacrifice nothing you worship nothing.

We sacrifice all the time. For the objects of our affection in our love we sacrifice in marriage. We sacrifice for our children. We sacrifice it at work. We sacrifice for our friends and yet somehow we think that we figured out the Rubik's Cube of Holiness outside of sacrifice to our God.

So I asked you this morning. What does your worship cost you. Hebrews 13 15 says through him then let us Continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is The fruit of lips that confess his name.

There's a part of the story that I haven't told you yet. And that is that Jesus is sitting at a banquet in this house and in this banquet the job of the women during the banquet was to serve the table and be quiet and That's exactly what Martha is doing.

She's serving at the table, but Mary overcome with her affection. Overcome don't miss this overcome by the Spirit. To lay out the sacrifice goes and anoints Christ. Is it anti-patriarchy? No, no. No, what she did is she came forth of the culturally inappropriate time to offer worship.

Mary in many ways Made a sacrifice. She could have sacrificed her good name to do this at this point and For us when we look and we see we're not paying a cost for being here this morning. But I will I will submit to you.

You will pay a cost if you confess his name and That's not Jesus Lord look our masters don't care about that you can say Jesus is Lord all day long. They don't care about that. They may even agree with you it's when we start to live like him and when we start to call sin sin and When we start to be honest with those who are around us and we call out the things that we see.

But we also love in situations where it is difficult to believe love when we accept sinners into our midst and Agree and believe their repentance and invite them into our home. That is scandalous to a world around us who is simultaneously forgiving of everything they love and unforgiving to the max of Repentance and turning to Christ.

The world doesn't understand repentance. The world understands Toleration of their own gods and that's what they do. So what is sacrifice for us at a minimum at a very minimum? We have to recognize and praise Jesus for everything.

Let me go on a slight tangent. It's an important teaching for us today. We live in a time if you read if you read blogs if you read Christian social media if you read this stuff there is a lot of confusion about the idea of Idolatry and it comes into play here because what we'll do is we'll think well.

You got to get rid of the idols to worship Christ. And what are the idols you have? Well, once again, our spiritual betters will tell you that our biggest idols are Our wife and our family. Maybe our job.

Here's the issue. We can love things without them being idols. The idol is when we feel that tug in our heart of allegiance to the thing when we are called to worship Christ. We were called to give this thing up in order to do this.

Now. We know that we have an idol. Right. It's not liking something. It's not loving something. Idolatry comes into place whenever we are holding it in Opposition to what Christ has clearly commanded us to do and that's how you identify.

If you'd rather spend time with your wife on Sunday morning then assemble with the Saints then I will give you permission to say that maybe your marriage is an idol. Okay, if that's not happening though, not likely it's not likely we are called to love those things.

We are called to have them in proper positions. So we recognize and praise Jesus for everything not in a pietistic Doesn't matter sort of way but in the way that we are thankful gracious encouraging people.

We are optimistic. Why would we not be optimistic is our God not in control? Do we fear anything besides God and if we fear God and if God is for us who can be against us? That is the way the Christian walks.

Christians are not losers. Contrary to popular belief. Guess what? We don't lose down here. We don't. We are going to win and the reason we're gonna win is because Christ is King. Because he is in charge of everything and he is ordering history to his purposes and to his will.

So we recognize and praise Jesus for everything and it matters. We also meet together. We sing songs. We hear the word and we take communion. Those are important things. It's not just stuff you take and eat and drink.

It is a means of grace by where we are drawn together in the Spirit Unity in the body and we remember what Christ has done because when we remember it changes our future it changes our outward activity.

Difficult thing we have to do at a minimum. So we have to love one another and we have to bear one another's burdens. We do did you know sometimes your brother is going to sin against you and sometimes you have to just bear it.

You do you talk to him it's difficult. It's hard the injustice screams out but at a minimum we have to love one another if we are going to love Christ. That's what he's called us to it is impossible for us to truly worship the Living God and hate our brother.

Impossible cannot happen. We hold no treasure in our hearts that vies for our affection with the Lord and then finally this We love God. We don't just say it. We love God all the way to the tips of our toes.

It's not an emotional outburst. But it is a deep-rooted repentance that has changed everything our heart desires. All of you if you claim the name of Christ this morning if you have faith in Jesus Christ That means you have repented of your sin and repentance is very simple.

But it is elusive for those with a hard heart and it is impossible for those who have not been given a regenerate heart. Repentance is we look at what God hates and it's the way that we're walking and we turn completely around and we walk the other direction and the reason we walk the other direction is because the pull of that direction is Greater than the pull of the sin that so enticed us and ensnared us see sin gives us pleasure for a season.

Sin gives us good feelings for a season, but it results in death. But on the other side is the Living God who forgives sin who has made a way for us and the call and the pull Of God is greater than the pull of sin and so the Christian life is one of confessing sin turning away from it and walking towards God and that is Impossible for the natural man and it is elusive in hard-hearted Christians.

It's elusive. I preached in first Samuel that repentance is a gift from God every Rational part of Saul's walk in first Samuel would have said stop it Saul. Stop it. You are killing yourself and you're killing your kingdom.

All you have to do is believe what God has said, but Saul can't do it. We're Calvinist here. We understand that we don't come to a saving faith of God through our intellectual majesty. We come through a saving faith of God because he changes our hearts regenerates us and gives us the Holy Spirit.

So when we say that we love God We follow his commands because we love him when we love our neighbor as ourself. It's because we love God and that is the greatest command and all the rest of them follow after it.

Repentance. Christian repentance. Pray for it. Beg for it beg that God would give you repentance that he would take this stain and the bitterness and the anger out of your heart and The love of sin out of your heart and that he would let you turn in the opposite direction.

And it is sweet when repentance happens is This woman not showing. She's showing that nothing matters to her except her Lord. That's the object lesson. That's what's in play here. Let's look at the need for it.

Judas’s Bitter Coalition and the Price of Betrayal

Let's go back to the ugly. We looked at the good we looked at the bad. Now we're gonna look at the ugly and it's quite ugly. So the response of This woman giving everything the most valuable thing she owns to her Lord and Savior is this but some were indignantly Remarking to one another.

Why is this perfume been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for over 300 denarii and given to the poor and they were scolding her. Moving on in verse 10 Judas Iscariot who was one of the twelve went away to the chief priests in order to betray him to.

Them.

And when they heard this they were glad and promised to give him money and he began seeking how to betray him in an opportune.

Time.

Do you know what the opportune time is going to be? Right after the Lord's Supper. Right after the intimate table setting which is where we go next week. And we look at how the Lord even loves his enemies and he waits and he gives them every opportunity.

And they deny and they rebel. But first let's look at everyone else. They were indignant and angry. Why why are disciples so indignant? Well, John gives us insight. It's because Judas is stirring them up.

Judas is the one who wanted to give all of this money sell the perfume give the money to the poor. But what he really meant was I'm in charge of the box and I want to steal some of it. That's what he wanted to do.

But Judas is angry and don't miss this Christian. He makes everyone else angry. Our hearts are prone to wander and when we run into someone who is spewing their bitterness and their vile words and their anger and their anger and their malice our Natural man hearts that are still burdened in the flesh.

They make us angry too and we start to have a venting fest together. We rage together. It's not come let us reason together. It's come. Let us rage together. It's come. Let us character assassinate together.

This is what's going on and Jesus is in her circle. And we have to ask what is the patience of God like? Isn't it incredible? Look at what Jesus has done the most greedy. Worst of the disciples the one who is totally blind not partially blind.

He has been not only made a disciple. Not only the betrayer not only given the food at the table at the Lord's Supper. But he was also given charge of the money. Did Jesus not know what he was going to do.

He for sure knew. He knew and he put him there and this creates the tension inside the church today that God for his purposes. And because of the mysteries of his will brings devouring ravenous wolves into the church body.

He brings those who profess the name of Christ, but who do not love Jesus into the church body and they are among us. They are among us and it's very difficult because we would say didn't Jesus know, of course he knew.

So why is Judas even hanging around? Aren't we warned that a little bit of leaven leavens the entire lump? Yes. But in the church, guess what? We don't tolerate Judas here because I'm not Jesus. Jesus is doing something here and in his complete power.

He understands everything that he is trying to accomplish. But look at this there is an unrighteous blindness in Judas that is cloaked in religious language. Is it not he doesn't say? We should have just sold that that was worth a lot of money.

No, no, no. No, no, he's much more clever than that. We should sell it and give it to the poor. It is it is a sickness that the worst people. They will say the most damaging malicious terrible things and then at the end they'll say Bless you brother in Christ's name.

It's taking the Lord's name in vain. But even worse than that it's how subversives infiltrate and it's how they devour and destroy. Even the elect if they can we saw that last week so what in the world here and What he does is he gets these partially blind disciples and he says all this money could have been given to the poor and they go.