Keep sharing good news without ads.
Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/jerry-jennings/mary-of-bethany/
Now read with me in Luke chapter 10.
The Gospel by Luke chapter 10.
It says in verse 38,. "...Now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word.
But Martha was cumbered about much serving and came to Him and said, Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bitter therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, Thou art careful or worried and troubled about many things.
But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.". Now John's Gospel chapter 11. John chapter 11 and I'm reading at verse 31. "...The Jews then which were with her in the house and comforted her, when they saw Mary that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.".
This has to do with the Christ raising Lazarus. "...Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews also weeping, which came with her, he groaned in spirit and was troubled and said, Where have you laid Him? And they said unto Him, Lord, come and see.".
And notice verse 35, Jesus wept. On chapter 12. John chapter 12. It says in verse 1,. "...Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom He raised from the dead.
There they made Him a supper, and Martha served.". Now, she's not encumbered. And I take it as because the supper was made for Him, but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with Him. "...Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spiked nard very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair.
And the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.". Now, we've read three references relative to a woman that is affectionately known as Mary of Bethany. And she's found at the Lord's feet. In Luke chapter 10, she's found there.
And what's going on there is instruction. John chapter 11 is the idea of comfort. And John chapter 12 is the idea of service. And she's seen here in John 10 as a pupil learning. Excuse me, Luke 10 as a pupil learning.
John 11 as a pilgrim. And I take it in John chapter 12 as a priest. And these are features that are found in every child of God. We should be pupils learning at the feet of Christ. Spending time in the Word of God.
And then as well, we are pilgrims. We are moving through this wilderness. And we're going onward and we're going upward and we're going homeward. But we're traveling through. We're just pilgrims. We're not going to be here forever.
One of these days, we're going to leave this poor, groaning world behind. And it will either be by the rapture or the article of death. I'm looking for the rapture, not the article of death. And then we're also seen as priests.
We're not of the priest craft. There's a lot of priest crafts in the world today. But we're not part of a priest craft. We are part of a priesthood. And it is only priesthood that the Lord acknowledges and recognizes in the world today.
Not those of the priest craft. His home in Bethany is a special place. It's an interesting place. And the Lord was found there a number of times because of what He found there. And what He found there, we can find there as well by reading the Word of God.
He found a family there. And He found a feast there. And He found a fellowship there. And He found a faith there. And these are all marks of a spiritually healthy assembly. Those are things that should be found in every spiritually healthy assembly.
The family of God is there. People that are born again the Bible way and washed in the precious blood of Christ. And then there's a feast that is found there. And we've enjoyed that this Lord's Day. It's a remembrance meeting.
And because we're remembering the One who suffered, bled, and died on our behalf at the cross of Calvary, it becomes a worship meeting because it wells up worship in your heart and in my heart. And men are heard audibly in their worship.
And sisters are heard silently. They are heard, by the way, in their worship. If you were to turn to Matthew 21 and verse 17, the Lord found a lodging in this place called Bethany. If you turn to Luke 10 and verse 38, the Lord got a listening ear there.
You come to John 11 and the Lord got a response there. Lazarus come forth and He responded and came forth. You go to John 12 and the Lord got a welcome there in this little place called Bethany. And then when you go to Luke 24, we read that the Lord led them as far as Bethany.
That's as far as He led them. And no further, and there He blessed them. The feet of the guide in the hands of blessing. Seen in Luke 24. And these are assembly conditions. The assembly is a place where the Lord finds a lodging.
It is a resting place. It is a place of peace. And it is a place of praise. That's God's assembly. And in the assembly of the Lord's people, the Lord gets a listening ear. You have a listening ear and I have a listening ear.
Ideally, in the assembly of the Lord's people. Why? Because there's something to listen to. There's a lot of places you could go today and you could listen, but I guarantee you wouldn't hear much. You might get your ears tickled and you might get entertained.
When it comes to the assembly of the Lord's people, the people of God have a listening ear. They're interested in what God has to say. And that is found by the way of the Word of God. There's also a response there.
From time to time, there is a real response as to what is taken up in the assembly of the Lord's people. In the Gospel, there are souls that are saved through the preaching of the Gospel. And then, not only that, the saints of God from time to time respond to something that they have heard in relative to ministry to the Lord's people.
So, it is also a place where the Lord gets a welcome. He's welcoming God's assembly. I don't know that He's welcome everywhere, but I do know this. He is welcoming God's assembly. He's not really welcome in the schools or the colleges or in religiosity, but He is absolutely welcome in the assembly of the Lord's people.
And that is where He leads them. He led them as far as Bethany, and He never led them any further. I wonder why. He didn't want them to go any further. Because Bethany is a little picture of the assembly.
Assembly conditions. In Luke 1, they pray for the Messiah, but here in Luke 24, they praise the Messiah. It's good to have a prayer meeting, brethren. It's good to have a praise meeting. And our brother mentioned sisters praying with long prayer lists.
Well, my wife and I were up in Door County last week and we visited Betty Dearborn. Some of you know her. And Betty Dearborn, by the way, has a prayer list. How many people do you have on your prayer list?
Well, I can tell you that she has over 1 ,000 names on her prayer list. And she goes over that. She doesn't have anything else to do. She told me they got me penned up here. So there she is in the nursing home.
But she can still serve. And she does that by praying for you, brother. Every commended man in this room she prays for, plus. And her prayer list is interesting. Because a lot of the people she's praying for, they don't even have a name.
For example, one lady she prays for is the lady at the train depot on the platform. I don't know who she is. And Betty don't know either, but the Lord knows who she is. And then she prays for the man by the roadside.
No name. Just the man by the roadside. Kind of interesting. And she actually prays. She goes right down there with her finger every day. Twice a day, she told me. She goes over those names. I'm on her prayer list.
And I'm glad I am. And so are a lot of other people. But especially me, I am glad I'm there. Well, He led them out as far as Bethany in Luke chapter 24. And He didn't lead them any further. And the Lord would lead out all of His people from the sects and systems of this world to a place of the person.
That's the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, where two or three are gathered together in My name, where am I in the midst of them? That's His promise. And He doesn't promise to be anywhere else. So that's what God's assembly is.
A place of the person. A place of prayer. A place of peace. Place of peace. There should be peace in the assembly. There shouldn't be disturbances in the assembly. It should be a place of peace. And a place of praise.
It is a place where the Gospel message is proclaimed to a world of sinners lost and ruined by the fall. And then it is a place of the teaching of assembly truth. We are, as the people of God, gathered around God in the wilderness, called out by the clear, clarion call of the Gospel.
The greatest news in the world today is the message of Christ because it's a message of hope. And I don't know where else you'd go to find a message of hope and a message of happiness and a message of holiness.
But you can hear that in God's assembly. You can hear the Gospel in God's assembly like you cannot hear it anywhere else in this world. And I'm glad, and you are too, that we are gathered around God in this wilderness.
So in Luke 10, Mary is a pupil. That's how I'd like to look at her because she's being instructed. That's what happens when a person is a pupil. They're being instructed. Instructed from the Word of God.
Luke 10, I believe, makes it crystal clear that the Lord cherishes our affection before our service. There's an order there. You know, meals are temporary blessings. I love to eat. That's a blessing that I really like.
And if you can top that off with a chocolate sundae or a nice thick chocolate malt, I'll tell you, it's a blessing. It's wonderful. I really enjoy it. But you know, it's only temporal. But God's Word is eternal.
If we're feeding on the Word of God, it is something eternal. God's Word. I wouldn't doubt a bit in my mind that Martha learned a lesson here. She probably learned this lesson that learning or service without setting is difficult.
In other words, if we seek to serve the Lord and we're not setting at His feet, learning His Word, then it would seem to me that service would be hard and it would be very, very difficult. You know that David slew a lion and a bear in private.
And then he went and slew a giant. But he did it in public. But first he learned how to do that by slaying a lion and a bear. And he did that in private. So we need to be private with the Word of God before we're public with the Word of God.
And the Lord makes that pretty clear, I believe, in John 15, verse 5. He says, without Me, ye can do nothing. And the disciples learned it. And you and I have learned it. And really, if you stop and think about it, without Him, we are nothing.
Nothing at all. And there really is no substitute for what we personally, privately glean and gather, setting at His feet. And learning as a pupil. Just like this lovely lady did. It says in verse 42 that Mary hath chosen that good part.
I don't think that we learn by chance, do we? We don't really learn the Word of God by accident. We don't really learn it by chance. I think we learn it by choice. We pick the Word of God up and we learn by choice.
In other words, not by accident by paying attention to the Word of God, what we read, the truth. I take it that our service ideally flows from our occupation with Him. If any man serve Me, Him will my Father honor.
As a man, woman, a boy or girl is born again the Bible way. I'd like to notice that service for the son receives honor from the father. That's what makes sense to me about that. You come to John 11 and verse 21.
Mary is a pilgrim. And what does a pilgrim need? I don't know about the other pilgrims in the room, but this pilgrim needs comfort. And as a pilgrim, she needed to be comforted. Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
She was in a period of her life where she really needed comfort. And could it be that Mary was a person that had confidence in a loving, life-giving Lord? Because He is a loving Lord. And He is a life-giving Lord.
He can give eternal life. And He's the only One that can. And He can even give physical life and healing if He so desires. You know, there are a lot of skilled physicians in the world today, and I've met a good number of them.
At one time, I never ever went and saw a doctor. And then I got long at the tooth and I ended up going and seeing these doctors and they've been cutting on me for the last three years. And I never met one yet that sent a skilled physician to send men home to die.
Some of the greatest physicians do that. Some of the greatest cancer doctors. My wife had a wonderful cancer doctor. He sent her home to die. But I never read of the Lord sending anybody home to die. He's a great physician.
He's the One that can heal. The broken home. You're homebroken? On the verge of being broken? Well, the Lord can heal that. Is your heart broken today? Maybe it's on the verge of being broken. Maybe there's something's entered into your life.
And it's breaking your heart. Well, I want to tell you, the Lord can heal that. Maybe your health is broken. You know one day you feel good and the next day your health is broken. You know God is able to heal the broken home, the broken heart, and the broken health.
I had a good friend, John. He kept praying that the Lord would heal him. He had cancer. Pancreatic cancer. He used to come and pray with my wife when she was dying. About a year later, he was doing the same thing.
And he'd come and he'd pray with her. And then he'd tell me later on, about a year later, he was praying to the Lord that the Lord would heal him. That the Lord would deliver him. And do you know what the Lord did?
He did deliver him. He took him home to be with Him. And that's deliverance. No more pain. John experienced no more pain. He just got up one day, one night, he took four steps, and he dropped dead of a heart attack in his living room, in front of his wife and daughter.
And the Lord took him home and delivered him from the very thing that he prayed about all that time. And Mary fell at the Lord's feet. Why? She was filled with grief. You know, I think here we can learn what the Lord can be to you and me in a time of grief.
In a time of sorrow. You know, when you and I are suffering, sometimes folks don't have any compassion over that. Have you ever noticed that? But I'll tell you someone that does. And that's the Lord. He shows compassion.
We read, "...in holy humanity the Lord Jesus wept, but in deity He raised Lazarus from the dead.". The theologians tell me that's hypostatic union. And what the Lord did as God, He did as man. And what He did as man, He did as God.
And that we really shouldn't try to divide that and separate it. I take it that this verse, if we were to read in Isaiah 28 and verse 27, we'd learn that the Lord teaches that He won't put any more pressure upon us than what we can stand.
Or what we can take. Or what it takes to produce more fruit in our life than we heard about yesterday. Fruit. That's what we're here for is to produce fruit. That's really all a branch is good for, isn't it?
You couldn't build anything out of a pile of branches. Wind would come along, just blow the thing down. You couldn't even heat your house with a pile of branches because it's gone like that. But the one thing that a branch can do is bear fruit.
That's what we are. John tells us that we're the branches attached to the vine for the purpose of bearing fruit for the glory of God. And He won't put any more pressure upon us than what it takes for you and I to produce fruit in our lives.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation. That's 2 Peter. John 11, verse 4, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God. You know, sometimes God allows things, doesn't He?
To come into your life and mine. Now, I don't think that He's going to put the President in His office in 12 days or 10 days or 11 days. But He'll allow it. Who's going to put Him in office? It's going to be the voters.
Yeah, it's going to be the electoral votes. It is. But the Lord is going to allow that. He's either going to allow it or He isn't going to allow it. You know, there is the will of God. There's the direct will of God.
There's the permissive will of God. And there's the ultimate will of God. And I take it the direct will of God is things that God causes to happen. And the permissive will of God is things that God allows to happen.
And the ultimate will of God is going to be a big surprise to this poor, droning world. God is going to have His will in way about everything. He will. I take it that in this case, Lazarus' death was allowed that the true Messiah might raise him, the Christ of God, as a witness to His critics.
And not only a witness to His critics, but a means of establishing and strengthening the faith of the followers of Christ. In that day and in this day that you and I are living. And I don't think there's any indication that Lazarus was being punished, as some have told me, for the sin in his life.
John 12, verse 2 makes it clear that he was a devoted disciple. And then when you come to John 11, verse 3 to 5, the object of the Lord's love. The Lord loved him and He lifted him and He loosed him. And that's what He did.
When He saved you, brother and sister, He did it because He loved you. And it's the love of God that initiated salvation full and free in a place called Calvary. For by grace are you saved through faith.
But it's the love of God that initiated that. When the Savior died upon the cross of Calvary. In John 12, verse 2, He is this devoted disciple. And He is the object of the Lord's love. Just like you are.
He loved you. He lifted you judicially. He loosed you from the bondage of your sins, the plague of your sin, the power of your sin. And one day, we will be lifted bodily right out of this world. Lifted bodily because we've been lifted judicially.
And we'll leave the burdens of earth behind. It says in Hebrews 12, in verse 6,. For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. Scourges every son. Why does He do that? To make us bitter? No, to make us better.
To increase our appreciation. To think that He just really cares about us. When you think about that. He really does care for you. He cares about me. And then He says, casting all your cares upon Him.
Why? Because He careth for us. He cares for you. Maybe nobody else cares for you. No man cared for my soul. But the Lord does. The Lord cares for you. And in realizing and recognizing that the Lord cares for me, it should increase my appreciation for Him.
It's not a whip that's in view here. But it's a divine display of anger. It's child training. It's education. It's correction. It cultivates Christlikeness. That's why God allows certain things into your life and into my life.
Promotes Christian character. That's what you see in this woman Mary. And it conforms us to the image of His Son. Romans 8 verse 29. I take it in John 12, Mary is seen as a priest and it's her service.
Do you know, brethren, the more we think on Him, the more we'll think of Him. Does that make sense? The more we think on Him, the more we'll think of Him. Our affection for Him made known by our visible, verbal appreciation for Him.
Sometimes people tell me they're saved. It's okay. And sometimes I tell people I'm saved. And that's okay. Do you know, something that I listen for is their appreciation for Christ. Sometimes you never hear that from someone that claims to be saved.
A visible, verbal appreciation expressed in our worship. And what else? In our witness. Our witness. We say something about the spikener and I'll sit down. It's kind of like our worship. It was personal to Mary, but it was precious to the Lord.
And your worship, brethren, sister, is personal to you as precious to the Lord. It was pure in its components. Not something that was pumped up. Worship isn't something we pump up. For the ears of the brethren, it's something we simply express from our heart to His heart.
And that's worship. It was pungent in its fragrance. Everything our worship should be as a priesthood of believers. And Mary, like most sisters, was spiritually discerning. Have you ever noticed that, brethren?
How spiritually discerning the sisters are? Sometimes far more discerning than the brethren. My first wife had a lot of discernment. Far more discernment than I did. And she was a great help to me. Because she discerned things before it ever clicked in my mind.
And probably never would have if she hadn't mentioned it to me. And the sisters, by the way, are very spiritually intelligent. Intelligent. In Luke 10, Mary sat at the Lord's feet. That's something we can do as well.
You come to John 11, she fell at the Lord's feet. In John 12, she anointed the Lord's feet. And as the sisters are, they learn. And they lean. Who are they leaning on? Leaning on the Lord. You're leaning on the Lord, eh, sister?
And they also love. They love. So, brethren, let us also learn the lesson from this lovely woman, Mary of Bethany.