John 12:1-8 (Robbing God)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

As we spoke about last week, the narrative in the Gospel of John is shifting. First 11 chapters of the

Gospel of John was about Jesus, the prophet, the true prophet, who called the nation to repentance, who warned them about the coming judgment that was soon to break upon them.

The prophet, who in the spirit of Elisha, was the one who did the greatest miracles, who spoke to the kings and queens of that group, the

Pharisees, who ultimately, like all the prophets before, rejected him. That's what we saw in John chapter 11.

The very end, the city rejects Jesus a final time. They create this delegation where they're going to destroy

Jesus, where they're going to put him to death, and Jesus abandons Judah, we saw last week, where he leaves

Judah. He goes to Old Testament Israel, Ephraim, and he reconstitutes

Israel with his 12 disciples, a new Israel that will rise in Jesus's resurrection.

Paul even says that we are a part of this new Israel of God in the book of Galatians. So today, if we are

Christians, we are Abraham's offspring, and we are a part of the Israel of God brought in, grafted in by Jesus Christ.

So John 11 tells the story of how the old people, the old covenant people, rejected him.

Now what I find fascinating about this is that God promises to Abraham in Genesis 15 that 400 years are going to happen before his people are brought out of the land of Egypt.

Those 400 years were so that the sins of the Canaanites could be filled up to the full. Did you know that for Malachi, the final prophet, to Jesus was about 400 years?

Then the prophet comes, then Jesus comes, because their sins were filled to the full. The symmetry between the

Old and the New Testament is astounding. Just as the Canaanites were destroyed for their sins in the Old Testament, the people of Judah, shockingly, had filled their sins to the full, rejecting

God's one and only Son, and they were like the Canaanites, destroyed. In AD 70, when the temple was burned, the city was destroyed.

Their transgressions were complete. Now today, we begin a new section in the

Gospel of John, which is the kingly section. Jesus is anointed as king today in this passage.

Jesus rides into the city as king next week. Jesus talks about his throne being on a Roman cross in four weeks from now, and then we also learn that Jesus is the king who's going to draw all nations to himself.

He's going to have a global, international kingdom that's going to span every single era until he returns.

So John 12 is really getting at the fact that Jesus is king. Now today,

I just want us to accomplish three things as we begin this new section of John. I want us to see how

John 12 1 through 8 is introducing this royal dinner that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are throwing for their king.

This astounding, beautiful meal where they give everything that they've got to honor Jesus.

The second thing that I want us to accomplish is I want us to see their radical devotion to Jesus. I want us to see how

Lazarus is radically devoted. I want to see how Martha and Mary are radically devoted.

I also want to see how Judas is radically opposed to Christ here in the narrative of John 12.

And then finally, I want us to examine ourselves. I want us to examine us if we are the kind of people who look like Lazarus, Mary, and Martha in the way that we worship, in the way that we serve, and in the way that we give.

Or, do we have the heart of Judas who robs from God? That's what we're going to be doing today.

So let us turn to John 12 1 through 8 as we examine these passages together.

Verse 1, Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom

Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made him a supper there, and Martha was serving, but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with him.

Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, the one who was intending to betray him, said, Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor people?

John tells us now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.

Jesus, therefore, said, Let her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.

For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

Lord Jesus, we see here a beautiful demonstration of love, a beautiful gift of this banquet that was offered to you 2 ,000 years ago by your servants

Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Lord, I pray that we would see the heart that these men and women offered to you, how you were their chief and greatest treasure, how they were willing to give everything for you.

Lord, also pray that we would examine our own hearts today. Lord, I pray that none of us would be found having the heart and the mind of reprobate

Judas. Lord, we all sin. We all fall short of the glory of God, and there are times where we slip into the sins of Judas, where we slip into the affections of Judas, where we slip into the mind and the patterns of behavior of Judas, and Lord, we know that our sins are not held against us because of the cross, but Lord, we also know that by your

Holy Spirit conviction must come. Lord, if there's any of these ways that we have slipped into the thoughts and the hearts and the behavior of Judas, Lord, I pray that today as your people we would repent joyfully and that we would worship you like Lazarus, that we would serve you like Martha, and that we would give with all our hearts like Mary.

It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. The text tells us,

Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom

Jesus had raised from the dead. Now, we know that he's just left Ephraim. He's just come to Bethany.

Bethany is a suburb of the city of Jerusalem, and the text intentionally tells us that there was six days until the

Passover. Now, six days is a number that is highly significant in the

Bible. There's all kinds of six -day allusions that we could pull out of that.

They're found all over the Bible. They're found even in the Gospel of John, and we should pause when we see such a number and consider what it means.

Now, you remember the original creation was made out of six 24 -hour days. Not long periods of time.

We're not old earth creationists. We believe in six literal 24 -hour days sometime in the past that God made the earth.

John's introduction. Did you know that John begins his book with, in the beginning? He's telling the story of a new

Genesis. Genesis begins, in the beginning, and then John begins with, in the beginning was the

Word, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He's telling us a new Genesis story, which is why

John very carefully and very meticulously details in John chapter 1,

Jesus's first six days. It's not obvious. You have to dig around in there, and if you want, you can go two years back into the sermon catalog, and you can hear how we got there in John chapter 1.

But it's there. The original work week was patterned off of six days.

Think about it. We complain about our work. We work five days a week. The original work week was six days. Six days to keep the ground, work it, till it, conquer it, subdue it, and have dominion.

That's Genesis 128. The blessing of man is to have dominion over the earth for the glory of God.

You talk about six days. Six days is the day that man was created, where God literally fashioned man out of the dust and then breathed the breath of life into man.

It was the sixth day that represented work, the sixth day that represented the formation of the human race.

It was the sixth day that represented all of the benefits and the joys and blessings of old creation, and yet we know that old creation fell.

So is it any coincidence at all that Jesus is coming back with six days left? Sort of book -ending creation.

Creation begin with six days, and then Jesus, before his world -changing, creation -shifting resurrection, he has six days to close out the old creation.

You see the bookend? Creation begins with six days, the old creation is going to end with six days, and Jesus is going to rise as the author of a new creation.

It's astounding. Now we know that these events happen. We're not just adding theological fodder to this because we like to nerd out on that, although there is some truth in that.

But John's not making this up to support some esoteric point. It actually did happen.

Jesus really did come to the city with six days before the Passover, so it's a historical fact, but we have to remember that God is sovereign over every detail.

That Jesus could have ridden, or he could have came into the city with five days left. He could have came into the city with four days left.

He chose to come into the city with six days left. Why? I think to give us some beautiful theological details of what

Jesus is going to accomplish. Remember, I just said that he's the author of a brand new creation. The old world, temples, feasts, and priests are all passing away.

That old world of being in our sin, separated from God, that curse that lasted from Genesis all the way to John chapter 19, chapter 20, where we can't know

God fully because of our sin, that's going away because when Jesus rises from the dead, he's going to bring about new creation.

It says that he's the first fruit of a new creation. That means if we're in him, that we're crucified with him, buried with him, raised with him, raised to what?

New creation. New creation. I think there's also some aspects to this that have to do with work.

Did you know that work was not a part of the fall? We think it is. I don't want to go to work today.

What a curse. It actually wasn't. Work was never meant to be a part of the fall.

Work was before the fall, before sin, before the failure. Work was meant to have fruitfulness.

Work was meant to multiply blessings, to bring life to the earth. Work was meant to cultivate and to bring life.

So when sin came into the picture, futility came into work. So that now, men can't get the fields to produce and oftentimes women cannot get their wombs to produce, the curse affected both.

The curse affected work. Pain, sweat, blood, tears, and labor, futility were added to this thing called work so that it's cursed from Genesis 3 onward.

And yet we see Jesus coming to Jerusalem with six days. Why do you think that is?

I think because Jesus is going to redeem work. I think that Jesus is going to rise on the first day of a new week.

Why? Because there's new work to be done. There's new work that has never been able to be accomplished that will be done after Jesus's resurrection.

It's a new kind of work, a work that is that Jesus crafts, cultivates, and commissions for his church.

Now, I'm not talking about the old work of thistles and thorns. Your garden still has weeds and it will be so until new creation.

It says that creation is groaning right now because it is anticipating the kind of redemption that you and I have already experienced.

So I'm not talking about Jesus has redeemed that because there's still thorns and thistles and earthquakes and tidal waves and everything else.

What I'm talking about is a new work that Jesus has given his church through the resurrection. A new work that Adam was supposed to accomplish.

A new work of fruitful, multiplying, ruling, subduing, taming, and having dominion over the earth in Christ.

Jesus has reinstituted the very first blessing of Genesis 128 so that now we multiply by making disciples.

We are fruitful by being faithful. We subdue the earth by preaching the gospel.

We have dominion by extending the kingdom of God and we labor for our

King. And it says that even the gates of hell, even the serpent can't slither in and destroy that work.

There's been redemption that's happened to work. Work in the kingdom that will be successful because of Jesus.

I think there's also some elements there of new humanity. On the sixth day was old humanity made, formed by the breath of God.

You know the same word for spirit is breath? It's panuma. It's a breathy word.

Even in the Old Testament, it's ruach. It's another breathy word. God breathed into Adam.

God spirited Adam. Adam fell. What is the first thing that happens to us when we're a Christian? Christ has redeemed us and then the spirit, the breath of God, comes back into us.

Now we're new humans again. We're no longer fallen humans after the race of Adam. We're now made new and transferred into the family of God instead of the family of Adam.

We've been made new. There's so much, I think, that's encapsulated here by six days that Jesus comes into the city.

So much imagery, but we have to move on because we've got seven more verses to cover.

But I think it's beautiful. I think it's a foreshadow of what Jesus came to accomplish. There's also some truth in here that needs to be explicated.

Jesus is coming to the city as Passover lamb. Six days until the Passover. That's significant.

As we talked about last week, the original Passover in Exodus chapter 12 was instituted for the people of God as a meal for the people of God to be saved by the wrath of God.

So you have Jesus coming into the city. Just like the lamb would have came into the home of the

Old Testament Jewish family. In Exodus chapter 12, the lamb would come into your house for four days and he would stay there and the lamb would play with the children.

And the lamb would probably snipe some of the food on the table.

I mean, we don't know. The lamb would frolic in the little courtyard inside the home.

The lamb would probably snuggle with your toddlers when it was time to sleep. The lamb would be a part of the family, experience every single aspect of the family for four days.

And then on the fifth day, the father would take the lamb out, would hold the lamb, the lamb's head in his hands.

He would look the lamb in the eye and he would speak the family's sins over the lamb. And then in a very quick jolt of a knife, the lamb would bleed and die for the family.

Then the lamb's flesh would be roasted for the family to nourish the family. And then the lamb's blood would be painted over the doorpost so that the

Spirit and the angel of God would not come into the home and crush the family by killing the firstborn son.

The lamb was a substitutionary sacrifice that pointed forward to what Jesus Christ would do.

He came into the city. Next week, we'll learn that. And he stays there four days as Passover lamb.

He experiences everything that the city experiences for four days. Jerusalem was known as the house of God.

So what does the father do on the fifth day, on the crucifixion day?

The father takes Jesus, speaks the sins of the nation over his son, and allows his son to be crucified.

His blood painted on the wooden cross, his blood painted covenantally over the doorpost of our heart.

His flesh consumed by the people of God at the Lord's table. All of this is imaging.

Christ is the true Passover lamb who takes away our sins so that the wrath of God will pass over us.

And now, like the people of Israel, we're heading towards the promised land where we live forever with Jesus in New Jerusalem, led by the

Spirit, until Christ returns as King. The imagery is so beautiful. Now we know that the city at this time in John chapter 12 is starting to fill up.

It would have swelled to a population that was well beyond its ability to complement that kind of people.

Maybe a million, maybe a million and a half people. There's different numbers that are given in history on how many people would have actually filled in the city.

But the city's population normally would have been about a hundred and fifty, two hundred thousand. So it would have swollen to a massive size.

There would have been a large population of Diaspora Jews. These are Jews that have been spread out all over the

Roman Empire. I actually read this week that the population of the

Roman Empire was 15 % Jew. That's a massive amount of people who lived in the

Roman Empire from all over. And they would have been traveling to the city of Jerusalem to experience the greatest feast in all of Israel, which is the

Passover. Now, lots of them would have actually arrived early. So we're six days before the

Passover in this passage. They would have already been arriving because you could have never predicted how long it would take for you to travel in the ancient world.

A lot like Boston today. Some things actually just haven't changed.

Many of them would have come for early purifications. Many of them would have come to participate in the pre -feast rituals and activities, but the city would have swollen to an disproportionate and unbelievable height.

Now what we see in this passage as we move now to the passage proper is that Jesus and his disciples are preparing for a public feast by having a private banquet.

The city that wants to kill him at the public feast is going to happen next week.

Today, we look at his friends and those who love him who have a private feast in his honor. Verse 2 tells us,

So they made him a supper there and Martha was serving, but Lazarus was one of those that was reclining at the table with him.

I can't help myself but to remember back to the the first miracle that Jesus accomplished, which was the wedding at Cana.

Jesus introduced himself as prophet to Israel, then after that he went away with his chosen disciples in chapter 1, then he attends a banquet in chapter 2, and then he enters

Jerusalem with authority right after that. There's sort of a pattern there. Because now in John 12, he introduces himself as king, he goes alone with his disciples in chapter 11, he attends a banquet in chapter 12, and then he marches into the city with authority.

You see, all four of those exactly one for one. Because we're in a new section of John, he shows

Jesus doing the same things. It's the same thing that's going to happen in John 13. He's going to reveal himself as priest by getting away with his disciples, then he's going to attend the meal of Passover, and then he's going to be taken into Jerusalem with the authority of God to accomplish redemption for the saints.

John is doing this because he's revealing to us that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king, which is what we talked about last week.

Now John 12 is all about his kingship. He's the anointed one by Mary who will ride into the city as king.

He's the one who's elevated on a cross -like throne. He's the one who's going to have dominion over all the nations. He's the one who's going to provide a feast for his people.

Isn't it interesting that in John chapter 12, people provide Jesus a feast, and in John chapter 13, he prepares a feast for us.

John 12, it's his friends making him a meal. John 13 is him making a meal for his church, which we'll learn about in a few weeks.

This passage today is meant to show us who Jesus is, and it's also meant to show us what it means to be a citizen of his kingdom.

If this passage is about Jesus being king, then all of the people in this passage are going to be showing you and I what it's like to either be a citizen of this kingdom or to be a

Benedict Arnold of this kingdom, and we're going to see four examples of that today.

Now, John names people intentionally. There's more people than four people at this feast.

There's the twelve disciples. There's maybe some larger group of people who are coming because they're curious that Lazarus was dead, now he's alive, and they want to see this meal.

But John intentionally names four people because he wants us to examine these four people.

He wants us to understand these four people and to find our place. Are we like these people?

Are we like Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, or are we like Judas? Again, John does this intentionally.

Now, what I find so fascinating about this is that it'd be interesting to have him list

Peter. It would have been interesting for him to list James or John.

The very first person who's mentioned in this passage is Martha. It's Martha.

What a non -traditional court that this king is assembling for himself. And I don't mean because Martha wasn't talented or she didn't have great acumen and skills.

I mean that in that time period, it would have been scandalous to list a woman as a part of your royal court as the first one, and yet Jesus lists her.

Then he lists Lazarus, the man who was raised from the dead. Then he lists Mary. All of these are positive examples. If you want to know how to treat

Jesus as king, this is the master class, how these three men and two women treated

Christ. And if you want to know how to reject him, Judas gives us a great example as well.

Now today, we're going to study these three characters in order. We're going to look at the positive ones first, then we're going to look at the negative one.

So let us go now to verse two through six as we see how this all plays out.

Now he said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief. And as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.

In a book full of negative examples, it's a beautiful thing that there's three positive examples here of how to approach

Christ. The first one is Lazarus. It tells us that he was reclining at table, which is a shocking thing because he was dead just a few verses before.

Every cell in his body was dead. His heart was dead. His brain was dead.

His blood was clotted. His arteries were hardened. His muscles were stiffened.

This man was not mostly dead. He was all dead. And yet now he wasn't.

Now he's alive. What a point of conversation. Can you imagine you arrive at the table and you're like, what's up,

Lazarus? How's it going? How do you feel?

I mean, we think about it. They would have been natural points of conversation that they would have had. You would think that the people who were sitting at the table would have been like, now tell me again one more time what it was like when you opened up your eyes for the first time and you realized that you weren't dead anymore.

And he's like, well, I mean, I opened them up and I couldn't see anything because my head was wrapped with all these bandages and I came stumbling out and you're the one who took the bandage.

I mean, what else do you mean to say? It had been a fascinating meal to be at. It would have been an interesting sort of conversation to be on.

If you could be a camel or you'd be a fly on a camel's back, you'd want to be at that conversation, right? Except the camel wouldn't be in the meal.

Now it says that he was reclined. I think that's fascinating. He wasn't in the kitchen helping

Martha serve. He wasn't in the cupboard helping Mary pull down this expensive bottle of perfume.

He was seated reclining at the table with Christ. Now that doesn't mean that he was kicked back in a lazy boy, but he was sitting in the most royal posture that was available to him at the time.

In those days, there was three ways that you could eat a meal. There was the low cushions at the table.

You would sit at a low table and you would sit on cushions and you would eat a meal. And that was a very informal way to eat a meal.

It would almost be like today when we grab our leftovers and we go to the couch and we watch a basketball game or, you know, we're just in our pajamas and we don't feel like going to the table.

So we just kind of were roughing it on the couch, eating leftovers. That's kind of this sort of informal way of eating at a low table with cushions around the table.

That's not what was happening here. There's another way to eat where it would have been a little bit higher table with chairs sitting around the table.

This would have been more formal. This would have been like eating Thanksgiving dinner at the table. This would have been a much better way to welcome a guest into your home would be at the high table with the high chairs.

But that's not what was happening here either. What was happening here was that they were reclined at these couches, these elaborate, beautiful couches.

This would be like taking out your nice plates, your polished silver, your fancy chairs and eating a bougie meal.

That means nice. This was the most formal way that you could eat a meal.

This is a way that they were basically offering Jesus to celebrate him, that fact that he rose

Lazarus from the dead. This would have been an expensive meal. This would have been a meal where they were reclining on beautiful chairs with their bodies faced towards the table and their feet away from the table, because that would have been the most polite way to orient your body to this meal.

And it was a way of prioritizing Jesus. It was a way of saying, you are worth my very best.

It would have been like today, if you throw a meal for your friends and you have steak and lobster and you have, you know, hors d 'oeuvres and your whole family is involved in serving this guest, like a dignitary has come from out of town and they've chosen to meet with you and your family.

It would have been the best meal that you've ever thrown. That's sort of what's happening here. Lazarus was there reclining at the table, doing what

Lazarus was supposed to be doing, fellowshipping with Christ. Now this word reclining also has religious undertones to it.

If you look it up in the Greek, it can mean reclining at the table on a fancy meal, but it can also mean reclining unto worship.

It can mean orienting your body in a committed way, in a devoted way, in a fully attentive posture of worshiping that thing.

I think that those undertones are there for a reason. Lazarus is offering Jesus the very best devotion he's ever offered anyone.

Lazarus is communicating how much Jesus means to him by giving him every bit of his attention and affection and worship.

Instead of getting up and running around, he prioritized simply being with Jesus. How often do we need to learn from the posture of Lazarus?

The man who gave up everything to be there in that moment with Christ. There's many things that he could have done to show his gratitude.

The one thing that he did was sat in the presence of Christ and enjoyed him. That's what worship is.

And how often do we have the opportunity to do that? And we take it for granted. You know, we've been raised from the dead too. We've been resurrected out of the dead.

We were in the tomb. We were lost. We were found. We came out. We have an opportunity every single week to recline at the feet of Jesus.

Do we do it like Lazarus? With rapt attention, with full passion directed at the face of Christ.

We have an opportunity every week to recline at the Lord's table to receive the blessings of God.

We have an opportunity every single week to fight for time with him. Do we awake in the morning for focused prayer to recline with Christ?

Do we spend time in his word upon the couch in the morning while our eyes are still bloodshot?

Do we spend that time focused and dedicated with Christ? Or do we hit our alarm and snooze until reading the

Bible doesn't make sense and we just go off to work? We have opportunity after opportunity to prioritize, to lay down our calendars, to lay down other things that keeps us from the presence of God.

Do you know every single week we have the opportunity to come and to recline in the presence of God when the church gathers on Sunday?

And yet, how often do we all prioritize other things?

How often do we all? I think it's Hebrews 10 24 that says do not neglect the gathering.

The Bible had to say that because we're prone to neglect the gathering, aren't we? If we remember that we were the ones that were dead and that we were raised from the dead and brought out of the tomb, the joy that Lazarus has would be our joy.

But yet, don't we often forget when we do that we rob from God.

He's owed our dedication and our devotion. He's owed our mornings and our evenings. He's owed our sunrises and our sunset.

Every joyful allegiance that we have belongs to him. He's the very best and we owe him our very best.

And yet, when we don't give him our best, we are robbing God of his due. I'll give you an example.

If we decided to pay half of our mortgage payment because that's what we wanted to do, the bank would say that we were robbing from them and they would sue us.

So we very carefully make sure we pay our mortgage. If we're on our phones and our children are talking to us, it would be right if we were, if someone accused us of robbing our children of our presence because we're so focused on something else that we can't be focused on the things that matter, how much more so God.

When we're distracted by the things of this world, when we're distracted by entertainment, or we're distracted by social media, we're distracted by the news, or we're distracted by the things that we have going on in our life, the cookouts, the barbecues and everything else.

When we're not directing our gaze at Jesus Christ, we're robbing the king of what is due to him.

Lazarus did not do that. So the question I want all of us to ask ourselves is how does our life compare to that?

Do we prioritize being in the very place where God has promised that he will dwell with his people, which is the gathered church?

Do we prioritize that? Do we fight to spend time with him and his word? This is not legalism.

It would have been a funny thing if someone came up to Lazarus, now Lazarus, you're getting a little bit too crazy here with this dinner.

You're acting like a legalist. Lazarus would have been like, what is wrong with you? I love

Jesus. I want to give Jesus my best. I'm not doing this to impress him. I'm doing this because I'm grateful to him.

How much more so does when we are filled with love for Christ that the purest devotion comes out of our heart?

When we're filled with passion for the savior, we don't give him our leftovers. We don't give him our crumbs.

We give him everything. How many of you felt that before where you were just enraptured with Christ, where you were passionate about Christ?

There's a moment in your life where Jesus had every bit of your affection and your attention, and you know what I'm talking about because in that moment it was easy for you to give to him.

It was easy for you to serve him. It was easy for you to worship him. All I'm saying is that if we fall from that place, let us repent.

Let us repent not because we're shameful creatures. Let us repent because we want to be with a great savior, and we don't want to miss that.

We must learn from Lazarus when it comes to worship. That's the first one. The second is we need to learn from Martha in regards to being a servant.

The text tells us that she made him a supper there. They made him a supper there, and Martha was serving.

Martha gives us a glimpse of the second kind of behavior in the way that she is offering this to her king.

Now the word here is very fascinating. It's diakoneo, which means deacon.

Martha is performing the role of deacon here. She's serving. She's waiting at the table.

This is the same word that's used of Peter's mother. Peter's mother, who is sick, Jesus heals her, and then she jumps up immediately, and she begins joyfully serving

Jesus in the book of Matthew and the book of Mark. Now this was a strong pejorative word in the

Greek culture that they were living in. The Greeks believed that only the loneliest people would ever serve and wait on someone at a table, but the

Jews actually considered this to be an honorable thing. Martha was performing a very honorable thing to her

Lord and Savior. She was waiting on him, serving him. This is the same word that is used of Jesus in John chapter 13 when he gets down from the table and he diakoneos his disciples.

He serves his disciples. He washes their feet. Jesus is saying, I didn't come just to be served, but I came to serve so that I could give my life as a ransom to the many.

Christ makes a pattern of what it means to serve him by serving his disciples, and it shares, it shows our heart.

In relation to Christ, all of us, all of us are small and frail, and all of us are dearly loved in his gaze.

All of us, like Martha, can serve him, the infinite, excellent, precious, sovereign, radiant, brilliant, staggering, mighty

King. That's a part of our devotion to him is knowing what our role is.

Jesus does not exist in heaven to serve us. Jesus exists in heaven to receive our service and our praise.

Just like Martha, we've been called to lay our ambitions down, to lay our opinions down, to lay our plans down, and to joyfully serve him.

Not as a duty. Again, I don't want to continue to make us think that we're talking about legalism here. Martha would have said, if you called her a legalist, she would have said the same thing.

Lazarus said, what are you talking about? Go back to seminary. Let me serve

Jesus. Maybe she would have said that. Serving Christ is a delight for those who love him.

The way that we serve showcases the state of our heart. If we serve ourselves, if we serve our ambitions, if we serve our pride, if we serve our families above Christ, it showcases that our heart is not in love with Christ.

Where your service is, your heart will follow. So the way that we worship him and the way that we serve him is indicative of our heart towards him.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, do we look like Martha in this regard, or do we have areas for us to grow?

Is Jesus our chief aim? Is he our over -mastering passion?

Do we get all manner of joy from serving Christ, or do we prioritize ourself and our appetites and our flesh and our sins, our wants, our needs, our desires?

Who do we prioritize? And I ask this question again, because my heart is that I want your chief affection to be

Christ. I want your passion to be Jesus, because if it is, you will serve him.

If it is, you will love him. If it is, you will worship him. If it is, then you will do the things that these men and women did.

You won't be like Judas. See, the problem with sin is that we are not supposed to go and try to fix our sin.

We're supposed to try to fix the real problem, which is we don't love Christ. If we work on that, if we pray to God about that and say,

God, I don't love you like I'm supposed to love you. I don't desire you like I'm supposed to desire you. If we work on that, if we pray towards that, if we read the

Bible towards that, if our over -mastering passion is loving Jesus, all of that stuff will get fixed.

Our worship will be more delightful. Our service will be more ardent and faithful. If we work on loving

Christ, submitting ourselves to the love of God, all these things will be a joy to our heart.

We will sing songs as we give our lives away, which is what we see all throughout history.

The problem is love. If we love something more than Jesus, if we serve something more than Jesus, we turn to something when we're broken more than we turn to Jesus.

If we prioritize other things above Jesus, that is idolatry. And is it any wonder why the church in this country and across the world sometimes is sick and her service is broken and her worship is broken because we have forgotten our first love?

We're robbing God. He gave us a kingdom. He came into the city as king, was crucified as king, was resurrected as king, and now he sits at the right hand of God as king, which means he gave us a kingdom.

He gave us a kingdom so that we could be his citizens. He gave us citizenship so that we would love him and thank him for welcoming us into his kingdom and go serve him to the ends of the earth.

If we're not doing that, it's because we've forgotten our first love. We're robbing God of the love, the praise, the service, the worship that he has due.

You think about it, if you go to work and you underperform on purpose, you spend hours on chess .com

learning how to do the queen's gambit, you're stealing productivity from your work.

If you're at home and you neglect to serve your family, if you neglect to do the things that need to be done, you're stealing from your family.

If we have no desire to serve Jesus, no desire to obey Christ, no desire to share the gospel, no desire to use our gifts, no desire to meet the needs of the broken, no desire to see

Jesus' kingdom advance to the ends of the earth, we're not like Martha, we're like Judas. We're robbing

God and we must repent. And we must repent.

That's the second person. We have to worship like Lazarus and we have to serve like Mary or like Martha.

And the only way that that's going to happen is if we love Christ. Let's move on to Mary. The text says,

Mary then took a pound, a very costly perfume of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

She had a pound of perfume. Now, this is a Roman pound. It's called a

Lipta, which is 12 ounces of this, but this was a very costly jar of perfume.

This would have been considered lavish devotion. This would have been considered over the top by anybody's standards. John tells us that the cost of this was 300 denarii.

Now, that tells us about how much that this actually cost. A denarii was the average wage of an average worker in that day.

Now, if you count weekends and holidays and feasts, there's about 300 workdays in a year. This is an entire year's salary.

In American modern day terms, this is 50 to $60 ,000 for a single bottle of perfume poured out on Christ as a lavish act of true devotion.

It says that it was pure nard. That means that it could have been one of two types of perfume. It could have been myrrh, which was dried powder or liquid from the gummy resin of a balsam tree.

It was found in Arabia. It would have been very difficult to get, especially 12 ounces of it. It would have been extremely expensive, or it could have been spike nard, which came from a nard plant from the mountains of northern

India. Either way, only the super wealthy would have had this perfume and only the extravagant would have had an amount this large.

Mary, very well, this could be her entire inheritance. This doesn't mean that Mary and Lazarus and Martha were wealthy, but this could mean that this was her entire nest egg.

She has nothing left after this. Her entire 401k, her entire retirement, her entire portfolio poured out on the head of Christ, there's nothing left, which would be the kind of anointing that's fitting for a king.

The king was one of the three offices in the Old Testament that was anointed. She anoints him with the most expensive, extravagant, and lavish oil perfume that she has.

And it says that the fragrance of it filled the entire house, just like the praises of God's people fills the house of God.

It also says that she was anointing him for burial. I don't even know if she understood that.

The disciples didn't understand that Jesus was about to die up to the very moment and they scattered because they didn't understand.

We don't know if Mary understood the significance of this, but Jesus does. And Jesus praises her to Judas because she has done something that is going to prepare him for burial.

You remember this anointing was done for people in burial because their body will decay and their body will stink.

So Jesus is saying, you have anointed me for burial. Why? Because Jesus would be crucified as a criminal and criminals were not allowed to be anointed.

The prevailing theory in the time of Jesus was your life stunk so bad that if you're a criminal and you die in your sins, then we would prohibit your body from being anointed so that you would stink in your grave just as you stunk in life.

Jesus is being anointed here as an act of true love, preparing him for his burial.

Now this anointing was not traditional. Traditionally, kings were to be anointed on the head. Mary is anointing him on the feet.

And what makes matters even more complicated in this particular scene is that Matthew tells us that she anointed his head.

Mark tells us she anointed his whole body. And John tells us that she anointed his feet. And you're like, which one's right?

Well, there's a very simple answer to that. Mark tells us that she anointed his whole body. He tells the full story.

Matthew, for theological reasons, prioritizes the head because Jesus is the true Davidic king. John, for theological reasons, prioritizes the feet because he's so supreme and infinite that we have to approach him with such humility that the only part of his body that we could even dare to anoint would be his feet.

Each one of the gospels are telling a different story. Mark is telling us the whole picture. Matthew is telling us the

Davidic kingly picture. John is telling us the king of heaven picture. And it says that she wiped his feet with her hair.

I find that to be one of the most beautiful things. It sounds gross, doesn't it? You let your hair down and you're wiping someone's feet, especially in that time where your feet were on dusty ground, sweating.

It sounds gross, but it's actually beautiful. Did you know that Paul in the book of Corinthians says that a woman's long hair is her glory?

What she's doing is she is taking her most glorious feature and she is wiping the feet of the most glorious Lord.

She is offering to him her best feature so that she can love and worship and show adoration to this infinite savior.

There's nothing on her body that she had more valuable than her long hair, according to Paul. It is her glory.

So she lets down her hair to wipe Jesus' feet. What an act of worship that this woman is giving.

And it would have been very taboo to say the least at this time. It doesn't say that she's wearing a head covering, which is what all women at that time would have been wearing if they were married.

So she's unmarried. She's unmarried and she's approaching a Jewish rabbi. She would have never done that in that time period and Jesus would have never allowed her to do that in that time period had it not been for the fact that Jesus is not acting here entirely in his humanity, but he is the

God man. He is receiving worship from the woman that he created. He's not just living in the social customs of male -female dynamics.

He is God receiving worship from his creature. And isn't it beautiful that the very first person to do this to Jesus is a woman.

Isn't it beautiful that Paul says that there's now no longer slave nor free, male nor female,

Jew nor Greek, that all are one in Christ. You look at the Old Testament and you see that it was the men who represented the family and the women stood on the outside.

You look now, it's the woman who comes to the inside because now male and female, that dynamic has been abolished.

Now we all worship Christ, the true temple. There's so much redemption all over this passage, but just to summarize, she gave extravagantly.

She gave worshipfully. She gave the most precious thing that she owned which was this perfume and she considered everything else on earth as rubbish to the surpassing worth and beauty of Jesus Christ.

He deserved her best and she gave it. The question that I want us to ask is how do we live like this?

Do we give him our best? Do we give sacrificially to him to the building of his kingdom or do we like Judas hold the purse strings and rob from God?

Now I know this is personal. I've never actually preached on a passage that had to do with giving. This is the first time in all of Shepherd's Church history, so I know this is personal.

It's all right when the pastor says that we have to give God all of our time. Nobody blinks an eye at that.

No one blinks an eye when it says we need to give all of our talents and our abilities to the Lord, but when we start talking about we need to give the best portion of our income, then our hearts flame up and we say, well, who does he think he is?

This church only wants money. That's not the case.

The Bible talks about this, so we want to talk about this and it says where your treasure is there your heart will be.

This woman's treasure was not that bottle of perfume. This woman's treasure was Jesus Christ. She joyfully poured $50 ,000 of oil on his head because it was worth more on his head and it was worth more on his feet than it was sitting in her cabinet.

When we love him, we don't give him scraps. When we love him, we don't give him leftovers.

When we love him, we give him our best. Think about the woman, the widow, who gave the two mites and all of the

Pharisees were standing around looking down their nose at her saying that she just gave two pennies. It was this woman,

Jesus said, who gave all she had and he praised her in the midst of this group of self -righteous, smug, and pugnacious men.

The point is not about how much we give so that we can make ourselves look good.

The point is do we give sacrificially? Do we give till it hurts? Do we give until the point to where we have to trust

God with our life? I'm imagining that giving away $50 ,000 of your retirement probably hurt, but what

I'm also imagining is she saw her future as better and brighter by giving

Jesus her treasure than by clinging to her treasures. She saw her future as better and brighter by lavishly glorifying

Jesus as her greatest treasure than being responsible to hold on to her treasures. And Jesus said, this woman will always be remembered for that.

No matter where the gospel story is told, her devotion to Christ will be remembered. And for 2 ,000 years, this gospel story has been preached on every continent, in almost every country, her act of devotion has never faded from the record.

We have to remember that God is worth our best. We have to remember that God gave us everything on the cross.

He gave us every drop of his blood, every affection. It says, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. He gave us everything.

Now we are called to give back to our Savior out of the overflow of our heart.

Giving showcases where our heart is. There's very few things actually that showcase where our heart is.

It says where your treasure is there, your heart will be. Is your treasure Jesus? Or is your treasure your clothing, your houses, your toys, your technology, your retirement accounts, and whatever else?

There's a diagnostic tool that you can use. I've had to use it myself multiple times in my family.

We've had to have hard conversations. Here's the diagnostic questions that you can ask yourself. Does my pattern of spending indicate a man or a woman who loves

Jesus more than anything? Or does my pattern of spending and behavior show that I love entertainment more than anything?

Or that I love my nice big house with all the trappings more than anything?

Am I so over -budgeted in one area of my life that I can't actually be generous to Christ?

And does that showcase an idolatry in my family's heart? Where is our spending going?

We've been given all of our resources to steward for the kingdom of God. We can't take them with us.

Every single thing that you own is the product of future garage sales and junkyards. Everything.

Your beautiful car will eventually be rusted out and it will be someone else's problem. Your beautiful house will eventually rot and decay.

Go to Europe and look at the castles. They're crumbling. Look at the Roman Empire. It's barely a few columns standing today.

Either you will give in such a way that will sow into eternity or you will give in such a way that will be forgotten.

Mary's gift was never forgotten because she poured it out on eternal Christ. I want you to test me on this.

I want you to test me. If you prioritize Jesus, he will not leave you lacking.

If you give Jesus all of your heart and worship like Lazarus, you'll be the happiest human being on the face of the earth.

You'll be fulfilled. If you serve Jesus like Martha above all else, you will never feel abandoned or forsaken.

If you give to him like Mary, God will not only meet your needs but he will do something else for you. You will be truly free.

You won't be encumbered by the love of money and by the love of the world. You will be able to give

Christ a kind of pure devotion that will never be forgotten. Test me on that. You can't outgive

God. It says if you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly. What are we sowing into?

Is it like Mary or is it like Judas? Which takes us now to that great vial of a man.

He's our fourth character. It says in verses four through eight, but Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples who was intending to betray him said, why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?

Now he said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief and he had the money box and he used to pilfer what was put into it.

Jesus said, let her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.

For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. Mary honored

Christ by this lavish gift. Judas dishonored Christ by this disgusting comment. And the comment showcases his heart because Judas did not see the value of Christ.

Judas did not see how anybody could joyfully do something so lavish that Mary had done because he didn't see

Jesus's value. Judas had given up a lot to follow Jesus. Judas had followed

Jesus every day for three years. He had given up his time. He had given up his, his plans.

He had given up so much. But yet when it came to this particular area, Judas, his heart flamed up and he said enough,

I can't give any further. This is ridiculous because he did not see the value of Christ.

His idol was his money. It says that he's the one who pilfered in the money bag. And unfortunately there's many in the church today who've given up as much time as Judas who've given up as much of their schedules and freedoms as Judas.

But oh, how the coffers reveal the state of our soul. There's men and women who've been going to church for 20, 30, 40 years, joyfully raising their hands, joyfully serving

Christ and yet have never given a single ounce to the kingdom of God. I think it reveals our heart.

Judas didn't protest when Lazarus reclined at the fanciest meal that he had ever offered Jesus. He didn't protest when

Mary served Jesus with all of her heart, but he did protest when that oil wasn't sold to put money in his money bag.

He protested then. Now before we get too angry at this scaly degenerate,

I want us to look at our own hearts and I want us to see if the smug pomposity of Judas lies within us as well.

Anytime that you and I are tempted to hold back in worship, the heart of Judas is alive and well. Anytime that you and I are tempted to hold back in prayer, hold back in the word, the heart of Judas is alive and well.

Anytime that our agendas become more important than the kingdom, anytime that we hold back in our serving, anytime that we hold back in what we give to Jesus, whether it's our time, our talents, or our resources, whatever it is that we're holding back on, the heart of Judas is alive and well and that's a dangerous behavior.

It's a dangerous behavior because that very night, the synoptic gospel tells us, is when

Judas betrayed Christ. He left from there and he sold Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver.

Do you know how much that's worth today? He sold Jesus out for $197 in today's financial money because Mary poured out $50 ,000 onto the head of Christ.

That was so ridiculous to Judas that he sold Jesus out for almost nothing. Mary worshipped him as if Jesus was everything,

Judas betrayed him as if he were nothing. I think the key to this text is what

Jesus says in verse 8. He says, for you will always have the poor, but you do not always have me.

What he's telling us is that we only have one life to live. We only have one life to worship

God. We only have one life. Every Sunday we miss is an opportunity that we miss to worship the living

God before we die and before we go to eternity. We only have one life to live to worship him. We only have one life to live to serve

Jesus. Every opportunity that we miss is an opportunity wasted. We only have one life. What are we serving?

Are we serving Netflix? Are we serving the Republican National Convention? Are we out marching for them?

Are we serving Christ? We only have one life, one life to give to the kingdom of God.

Let us not miss that. Let us not pass on that. Let us not treat

Jesus like Judas treated Jesus and treat him as nothing. Let us do like Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.

Maybe we give away more than everybody else. You know, when you do those things, the world thinks that you're crazy. The world doesn't understand how you could possibly pour out affection for Christ in a lavish way.

So what? It says that you will be given treasures in heaven. This Jesus went willingly to the cross for you and I.

He marched joyfully up the hill of Calvary. He was nailed willingly to a cross.

He was raised up and suffocated on a beam so that you and I could have the breath of God. He gave everything to us.

He rose from the dead for us. He did all of that. Why don't we give our best for him?

If we don't, and I know I don't, let us repent.

Let us remember what Christ has done. Let it fill our hearts with love because a heart filled with love will serve, will worship, and will give.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, the great enemy of our heart, the great enemy of our mind, the great enemy of our soul is lovelessness.

As people who've been raised, we've forgotten what that means. As people who've been saved, we've forgotten how radical that is.

We've forgotten that we were once dead. Lord, I pray myself, my family, this church, and Lord this country, and Lord the world would wake up and remember how beautiful you are.

Lord, I pray that our hearts would be filled with love for Christ. Lord, I pray that our affections would be so white hot that every other relationship in our life could rightly be called hate in comparison, like a candle being held to a supernova.

Lord, I pray that you would give us that kind of love for you and that our hearts and our minds and our actions would follow.

Lord, I remember the great poem, one life shall soon be passed, only what is done for Christ will last.

Lord, let us use this life well, and Lord let us use it in loving, joyful service to you.