WWUTT 2226 Jesus Anointed and the Plot to Betray (Mark 14:1-11)

A woman came and anointed Jesus, and Jesus said wherever the gospel is shared, what she has done will be remembered. Judas betrayed Jesus, and what he did was remembered also. When we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Mark 14:1-2 and the Timing of Holy Week

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we are on to chapter 14, and we're going to read here an interesting contrast between a woman who anoints Jesus and Judas Iscariot who plots to betray him.

Let's read verses 1 through 11 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Now the Passover and unleavened bread were two days away, and the chief priests and the tribes were seeking how, after seizing him in secret, they might kill him.

For they were saying, not during the festival, lest there be a riot of the people. 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 of very costly pure nard, and she broke the jar 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 denarii and given to the poor. And they were scolding her. But Jesus said, let her alone.

Why do you bother her? She did a good work 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 me. She has done what she could. She anointed my body beforehand for the burial.

And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what this woman did will also be spoken of in memory of her. Then 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 at an opportune time. So you see here this contrast we have of these two persons, a woman who very humbly comes to Jesus and anoints him with a very costly perfume.

And then you've got Judas Iscariot, who's looking down his nose at this woman, who is scowling at this gesture and thinking, hey, we could have just sold this perfume and had a bunch of money we could have given to the poor.

But this seems like such a waste. Why in the world is this going on? But Jesus says the woman will be praised. And what she has done will be remembered in memory of her wherever the gospel is preached.

How is Judas going to be regarded whenever the gospel is preached, whenever the narrative is remembered of all the things that Jesus did leading up to his death on the cross and then his eventual resurrection from the grave?

Judas will be mentioned in there, but mentioned as the betrayer. You know, you consider that in first Corinthians 11, where the apostle Paul is talking about how we should properly partake of the Lord's table in church.

He begins by saying on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and broke it. And so that betrayal is also spoken of whenever we read or hear the gospel accounts. Judas is remembered for evil, contrasted with this woman who is remembered for her great service unto the king.

Let's go back and look at the whole passage in verse one. Now, the Passover and unleavened bread were two days away, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how, after seizing him in secret, they might kill him.

Now, I mentioned to you a couple of weeks back. I'll expound on this a little bit more this week, but I'm just going to kind of tease it out for now. I mentioned to you that there's a possibility Jesus was crucified on Thursday rather than the traditional Friday.

And if he was crucified on Thursday, that kind of takes care of a number of the different problems that we often chat about concerning this week where Jesus goes to the cross. For example, what happens on Wednesday?

Wednesday is never really talked about. If you have the triumphal entry on Sunday with Jesus coming in on a donkey to the shouts of the people, you have him cleansing the temple on Monday, cursing the fig tree as well.

You have him teaching in the temple on Tuesday, and then the Olivet discourse that occurs on that day. Well, then you've got Wednesday, and the gospel doesn't record anything to us about what happened on Wednesday.

Then Thursday being the Passover meal, and then that night they go to the garden where Jesus is arrested and he's crucified on Friday. That is the typical timeline, and the Wednesday thing is just kind of mysterious.

Why is that Wednesday just kind of left there? But if you move the crucifixion to Thursday, well, that takes care of that problem. We also answer the often cited question regarding Jesus' time in the grave.

After all, he said that the sign of Jonah was going to be the sign for this generation for just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the son of man be in the heart of the earth.

And if you have him in the tomb for Thursday, so after his crucifixion, if that happens on Thursday, and he's in the tomb Thursday, and then Friday and Saturday, well, that's three days and three nights, and then he rises again right at dawn on Sunday morning.

So then that takes care of that. So that would be a good solution if indeed that would be the case. Now, how do we calculate that out to affirm that particular hypothesis? Well, that's what we'll talk about a little bit later on.

But if that's the case, if that's going to be the way that this all pans out, then this passage here at the start of chapter 14 is going to cause a little bit of a problem because it says the Passover and unleavened bread were two days away.

Now, when would that be? If it was two days away, if Jesus eats the Passover meal with his disciples in two days, that would be on a Wednesday. If his crucifixion is Thursday, then they're eating the Passover meal on a Wednesday.

And what would two days before that be? It's probably Monday. So this would be like it's going backwards because we just had the Olivet discourse in chapter 13, which we know was on Tuesday. So then this conversation that happens with the Pharisees plotting about how they're going to capture him in secret and put him to death.

It says it's two days before the Passover unleavened bread. Then that means it would have had to have taken place on a Monday, which means now we're backtracking a little bit. Now, that's not terribly unusual.

Mark has done that before. And to put that here at the start of chapter 14 would make sense, given that we're going to have Judas Iscariot plot to betray Jesus. So it kind of bookends what's happening here in this narrative in these 11 verses.

It starts with, well, on Monday, they were chatting with one another about how they were going to capture Jesus. And then Judas goes to them in verse 11 and says that he's going to betray him over to.

Them.

They're delighted with it and are even going to pay them or they're going to pay him money. So that kind of bookends this section with Mary, who's going to come and anoint Jesus at Bethany. So that's a possibility, even though we leave the chronology a little bit because we've just been through Tuesday.

Now we've got to go back to Monday to reveal this plot that's going on to capture Jesus. That still is a possibility. But it's also one of the reasons why people will argue for the Passover meal being on Thursday, because if this was the discussion that was going on among the Pharisees on Tuesday, then that's two days away from the Passover meal, which would be on Thursday.

Anyway, just kind of giving you the options, the possibilities, the different theories concerning how all of these things lay out in the particular week. The reality is we don't know exactly on what day these things happen.

We have a we have a guess. We have a general idea, but we don't know for sure. The only day we know for sure out of this whole thing is Sunday, because the gospel accounts say on the first day of the week, this was when Jesus rose from the dead on.

Sunday.

So we're we're kind of having to work backwards from there and try to figure out where all these other things lay out in the midst of what we commonly call Holy Week. So in the Passover and unleavened bread, which are two days away, the chief priests and the scribes seek how after seizing him in secret, they might kill him.

For they were saying not during the festival, lest there be a riot of the people. So that's all going on during the week. Jesus is still very popular with the people. Many are expecting that he's going to be the Messiah.

He's going to be the one that's going to ascend to the throne of David. He fits all the criteria. He is a descendant of David. He's of the he was born in Bethlehem. He is of royal lineage. He's done all of these miraculous things, especially that is really what has captured the attention of the people.

So they love him only insofar as it serves their interests. Really, it's not a it's not a loving him the way that we should love Jesus. It's loving him as an emancipator, somebody who's going to free us from the tyranny of Rome, not free us from our sins and the tyranny of death.

So they're plotting to capture Jesus, but doing it at an opportune time that it doesn't stir up the ire of the people. So then in verse three, while while he was in Bethany, remember that Jesus has been in Bethany every day this week.

That's where he would stay and then he would wake up and early in the morning and they would travel over the Mount of Olives back into Jerusalem and he had spent time in the temple and things like that.

So here now this would not be taking place on the same day that was mentioned in verses one and two. The plot to capture Jesus is two days before he is he is to eat the Passover meal. Now, this the anointing that happens at Bethany, this doesn't happen two days before the Passover.

There are a lot of people when they create this timeline of Holy Week, they will put the anointing of Jesus on Wednesday because we have two days before Passover. Then they're plotting on capturing Jesus.

And then the assumption is that the anointing happened on either that same day or the day.

After.

So often you will see in the traditional calendar that the anointing of Jesus at Bethany will happen on Wednesday. But according to what John says in John 12, you can't discount John's account of this.

John 12 verse one says six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So this anointing actually happens before. The Pharisees discuss capturing Jesus and Judas Iscariot ends up becoming part of that conversation as well.

So it's almost as if the real flashback that's happening here is the anointing itself. It's like Mark is letting us know what was it that truly prompted Judas to get involved with this plot of turning Jesus over to the scribes and the Pharisees.

And it was the anointing that happened at Bethany. And remember, we've seen Mark's flashback before, like back in Mark six, where we read of the death of John the Baptist, King Herod had heard that Jesus name had become well.

Known.

And he was concerned that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. And so at that point, we have this flashback to when Herod had John the Baptist executed and everything that happened surrounding that story.

So we've seen those flashbacks before in Mark. It's possible that this is another one of those occasions. The Pharisees are talking with Judas about betraying Jesus or capturing Jesus. And so we flashback to what event prompted Judas to want to betray the son of God.

And so verse three, 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. And this goes back to John 12 as well. We know from John 12 that the woman here is specifically Mary, the sister of Martha, sister of Lazarus, who had just been raised from the dead.

Matthew and Mark don't say exactly who she is, but John is the one who spills the beans. And remember, if all of this is happening six days before the Passover, then this is happening even before the triumphal entry.

So this is before we even get to that week of all of those events leading up to Jesus' death and therefore resurrection. He raised Lazarus from the dead, and it's after the resurrection of Lazarus that this has happened.

Mary showing her affection for Jesus. It's not necessarily that she's doing this because he raised her brother from the dead. That's just part of it. She knows that he is Lord. She knows that he is about to go and do what he has said he is going to go do.

He's going to go and die. He even says it in her presence right now. She has prepared me for burial, and she wipes his feet even with her hair. That's in John 12. That's also John's account. So she comes with this alabaster jar of perfume, very costly, pure nard, and a jar such as this would have been completely sealed.

It's not like it had a lid on it that you would unscrew and then pour it out. It's sealed up. And the moment that you break it, well, then it's now in use. And the fragrance will fill the home. It's not a big jar, probably very small.

But this is nonetheless, when broken, you intend to use it. Once you break the seal of the jar, you intend to use it. And it could have been that this particular bottle of perfume was specifically for burial.

And that's why there was so much of it and why it filled the home with its fragrance. Jesus even makes the comment about her preparing him for burial. So she breaks the jar and poured it over his head.

But some were indignantly remarking to one another, why has this perfume been wasted? Now, again, we know from John 12 that it wasn't like all the disciples are grumbling about this. What's going on here?

Why is she doing this? We could have taken the money and given it to the poor. It was specifically Judas Iscariot. Now, there may have been some other people murmuring as well. But among the disciples, it was Judas.

And John is sure to let us know seemed to really only be Judas from among the disciples. So Judas's comment was, why is this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? He said this not because he cared for the poor, according to John, but because he was a thief and having charge of the money bag.

He used to help himself to what was put into it. So he's kind of scowling at what it is that's going on here. He mocks the gesture, thinks it's ridiculous. Why didn't she just sell the perfume? We've got all this money now to give to the poor.

But of course, he's only thinking of himself. He's going to dip his hand into that money bag and take it for himself because Judas was a socialist. Yeah, I want you to give the money so that I can give it to the poor.

But really, I'm going to take the money for myself. Yeah, he's a real politician there.

It sounds like.

So anyway, going on, the end of verse five says they were scolding her. But Jesus said, verse six, let her alone. Why do you bother her? She did a good work to me. Jesus has given this gesture his blessing.

This is a good thing that she has done. Yeah, you're trying to be all like holier than thou by saying, we could have just taken this and sold it and given it to the poor. Why didn't we do that? Would have helped so many poor people.

Seems kind of a waste of perfectly good perfume. But Jesus says, you always have the poor with you. You want to help the poor? Go help them anytime you want. But you do not always have me. She has done what she could.

She anointed my body beforehand for the burial. So Jesus, once again, talking about how how he is going to go and die. And it seems like in Mark's gospel, especially the disciples express the most confusion over this.

And it may very well have been that Judas decides to betray Jesus because Jesus is not going to do what Judas and even the rest of the disciples expected him to do, expecting him to go into Jerusalem and take over the throne.

That's what we want him to do. Kick out the Romans, make Israel a great superpower again. That's what they wanted to see out of their Messiah. Now, the disciples don't abandon Jesus here or or murmur about this particular woman.

It just seems to be Judas. Judas, his response to this, his anger toward the fact that Jesus is not going to fulfill what Judas expected went way beyond the rest of the disciples. It went to the point of him betraying Jesus.

I read somewhere. I can't even remember what commentary this was. I read it years ago. But I remember one commentary theorizing that Judas may have betrayed Jesus into the hands of the scribes and the Pharisees, expecting that it would trigger what he wanted to have happen.

Maybe if Jesus is arrested, it would finally launch this thing into action. And Jesus is going to call for his his army, his soldiers to rise up and strike these people down. And now the war is on and we're going to kick out all of the all of the tyrants, these oppressors, and we're going to make Israel great again.

I can't keep myself from saying that it just just kind of rolls off the tongue. It kind of fits the moment, given what we have going on in our culture right now. So that may have been the reason why Judas had betrayed Jesus.

That's just a theory. Nothing in scripture really gives us his motivation beyond that. He just wanted to betray Jesus. Even conspiring with the Pharisees, how he might be arrested. And they promised to even give him money for this.

But consider, first of all, in verse nine, Jesus says, truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what this woman did will also be spoken, will be spoken of in memory to her.

And one of the things that this should communicate to us is the works that we do for Christ, we do for his glory, not to receive recognition from anybody else, but simply doing it out of service to God.

Mary wasn't looking for recognition from anyone. In fact, she was ridiculed for it. And likewise, the things that we do for Christ, because we're Christians, because he calls us to, because we desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus.

People are going to hate us for it. They're going to ridicule us. Just because you won't join with them in their flood of debauchery, as Peter talks about in first Peter four, they're going to malign you.

They will make fun of you because you won't get drunk with them or engage in sexual immorality because you love traditional marriage, because you hate abortion and call it the murder of unborn children, because you don't go out and party, because you don't subscribe to the world's views of psychology and philosophy and sociology and on and on it goes because you love God and you love his ways and you desire to walk in the righteousness of Christ.

The world will hate you for that. They will ridicule you because you want to honor Christ, but we're not looking for the recognition of the world. We just want to please our king. We want to worship our God because we love him, because he has done such a wonderful thing for us, giving himself in his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave so that all who believe in him, our sins are forgiven.

He is indeed an emancipator in the sense that he has freed us from the bonds of our sin and granted us eternal life in his imperishable kingdom. And for this reason, for our adoration of our savior, we worship him to the ridicule of the world, but to the praise of his glorious grace.

Judas is contrasted with this woman here who does not honor Jesus, who does not worship him, who does not heed the words that he just said. Instead, he plots to betray him. Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12, 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 at an opportune time. And my friends, if we get kind of fed up like Judas did, and we don't think that we're getting from God what we expected, we start being ashamed of the truth of the gospel, and people will start changing the gospel.

They'll change it into something that is friendlier to the world that I'm not going to be ridiculed for. And instead, I might even gain a little bit of popularity for it. And the Jesus that you love sounds more like a socialist, or he sounds like the false Christ of the Mormons, or the false Christ of the Jehovah's Witnesses, or the way that Christ's exaltation is minimized among Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox, and instead celebrating somebody like Mary in the place of Christ.

You'll see things like that that will happen in the world. That is the world's reaction. That might be the way that you want to follow Jesus because it's easier for you in that way. He gives me the things that I want.

Instead of understanding Christ and who he is according to what he has said in his word, and honoring him the way that God says that he is to be worshiped. The world might think it's strange, but it doesn't matter.

They may call us weird. So what? The reward is not in this earth. The reward is in the kingdom of God. Let's finish there. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read, and I pray that we would be as Mary here, desiring to honor Christ.

What can we do that would be such a good work unto the Lord that you have called us to do? That we do in praise and honor to our great King. Teach us how we might serve you today in holiness and in righteousness unto God.

And help us to beware lest there become in us an unbelieving heart and we go after worldly definitions of Jesus or the gospel or what God expects of us, instead of understanding who he is according to his word.

For you have drawn us to yourself. You have forgiven us and clothed us in white. We are your children by faith in Jesus Christ. So grow us, discipline us even. Love us as your children today. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.