Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

The text shows us at the very heart of it is the incomprehensibility of adoration to Judas. It’s interesting that we had been learning Psalm 62 in parts and really sang it because we needed to get it into the worship service to continue to mature in our singing. But it obviously can be seen in reference to our text today. Judas, the one who lies and who is greedy and a thief. So John 12:1-11 pictures two people before us, Mary and Judas, and their responses to Jesus.

So, please stand as we’ll read John 12:1-11 as our sermon text. Then, 6 days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead. There they made him a supper, and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him. Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.

Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, who would betray him, said, “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?” This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the money box, and he used to take what was put in it. But Jesus said, “Let her alone. She has kept this for the day of my burial. For the poor you have with you always, but me you do not have always.” Now, a great many of the Jews knew that he was there, and they came, not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him, many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this beautiful text before us. Lord God, I pray that you would give me clarity of thought and speech. That we would honor this text through its exposition and declaration and through our hearing of it. And that your Holy Spirit, Lord God, would show us wonderful things out of your word, that we might give you praise and adoration. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Back on our—I think it was our 20th wedding anniversary—my wife and I took a motor trip to Canada. We drove up to Banff and spent a little time there and then drove from Banff north up to Jasper. And that road is just an amazing road. You’re riding through the Rocky Mountains of Canada and nearly every turn reveals a new beautiful peak that is just overwhelming in its beauty and presence.

If you have never made that trip, I would encourage you to do so if your finances and time allow you. Every time you make a turn, new vista, new beauty. You can’t be more beautiful than the one before, but yeah, it is. And there’s just, you know, 60, 70 miles of this, as I recall.

Well, as we move through the Gospel of John, we make these turns as the text takes us to various places. And each of these things when thought about—each of these narratives—are just these beautiful presentations of the majesty and glory of God. They’re beautiful vistas. And this text is no different. There’s almost a crescendo as we build up going through this first half of the Gospel of John. Chapter 13 will be the beginning of the second half when Jesus now focuses on his disciples. We have five chapters of exposition basically by Jesus at the last supper. So, we’re kind of wrapping up the first half of the book and we had this beautiful resurrection scene, the conquering of death in chapter 11, and now we have this beautiful scene that’s given to us as a defining moment for certain people.

This is the next to the last supper. This is given with a specific time reference here: 6 days before Passover is when this occurs. So this is kind of the beginning of the last week of Jesus’s ministry that’ll lead up to his death and resurrection. And we know about the last supper that’s coming up in chapter 13. But here we have a supper before the last supper. In chapter 13, Jesus will sup with his disciples. Here he sits down with his friends. Not that his disciples weren’t his friends, but here we have Jesus back with the family that he loved: Lazarus, Martha, Mary. Perhaps Simon the leper is their father.

This text is very similar to texts in both Matthew and Mark. There’s a text in Luke as well that we’re reminded of here. Each of these mountain peaks on the drive up to Jasper from Banff—some of them look familiar. And if this text looks familiar to you as we read through, as we would have read through the synoptic gospels, we would have had some degree of familiarity. This wouldn’t have been a surprise to us because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell of an anointing of Jesus, but they’re very different.

Luke’s anointing happens in the context of his Galilean ministry. The woman who anoints him with her tears and wipes them off and then puts ointment on his feet is the woman who is forgiven much. This is not the same person or the same incident that we have here in John 12.

However, in Matthew and Mark, the account of the anointing of Jesus I believe is the same incident. There are different details. In Matthew and Mark, the head is anointed. In Matthew and Mark, the person that does the anointing is not named. It’s an unnamed person. But in both of those accounts, different people grumble about the cost of the adoration poured out on our savior by this unnamed person.

One reason why some commentators think it might be two different incidents is that in Matthew and Mark, it seems to be in the context of two days before Passover instead of six days before as it clearly is here. However, a careful reading of Matthew and Mark—and Calvin is probably one of the first commentators to point this out—a careful reading of Matthew and Mark shows that what’s going on in those accounts is discussion about how they’re going to put him to death. They’re having a meeting to do that and then Judas is going to come and betray them, betray Christ for money. And in the middle of that account is this, probably a flashback reminding us why Judas is doing what he’s doing.

In other words, in Matthew and Mark, what happens two days before Passover is this meeting of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the chief priests, and this actual betrayal by Judas. The arrangements for it happened two days before Passover. And to help explain those events in Matthew and Mark, we have a recitation of what had happened previously: what made Judas betray the Lord Jesus Christ?

So, that’s important for a couple of reasons. One, because it tells us that this text is a companion text to the other two in Matthew and Mark—same incident. And so we can apply some from that text to this text. Secondly, it’s important because again it makes this act, this incident, this next to last supper, a defining event, a critical event, the critical event in Judas’s life. This is what causes him to go south. This is what causes him to turn. This is what causes him to betray the Lord Jesus Christ. This act—it is incomprehensible to him and that’s at the center of our text.

So, we’re going to talk today about this act of adoration and how it’s a defining event, but not just for Judas.

The earlier account of this—for instance, the account in Mark’s gospel in Mark 14—there’s something there that’s very important before we begin our exposition of the John text. And that is that after the objection is made that she shouldn’t have done this, this money should have been given to the poor, after this Jesus says pretty much the same thing that he says in the John text. In terms of, you know, let her do this, this is a good thing she’s doing. She’s done what she has. She has come beforehand to anoint my body for burying.

So the same reference to anointing me for burial, and then verse 9 of the Mark text says this: “Verily I say unto you, wheresoever the gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world this also that she hath done shall be spoken of as a memorial of her.”

Now, that’s a very important verse. What it tells us is that wherever the gospel is preached, there’ll be a particular incident of a follower, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, that will be a defining moment for her. This is the defining moment of who Mary is. And this moment will also be for us a defining moment. In other words, when the gospel is preached, it is preached to the end that we, as Mary, had the same kind of adoration—incomprehensible to the world but absolutely at the center of the believer’s heart and his relationship to his savior.

This will be spoken of as the defining moment of Mary. And coming where it does at the climax of the first half of the gospel in stark opposition to Judas, we have, I think, portrayed for us a defining moment. What does it mean to be outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, to not be a believer? It means that adoration for Christ and worship of him is incomprehensible. What does it mean to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ? It means that we engage in acts of incomprehensible adoration toward our savior.

So I think this is important. Each one seems so important, each one of these texts. Each is beautiful, but there is a climax that’s happening here in the context of chapter 12, and this is an exceedingly important text for us as well. What, how are we defined? Are we like Judas? Can we not understand this event? Or are we like Mary? And will we commit ourselves afresh to the kind of actions that Mary engaged in?

You know, she did something that was of no value to her. My wife this last week—another little vista or peak in our relationship—my 52nd birthday, and we actually celebrated it on Thursday because of different meetings. The kids were out Wednesday night. But she cooked all day long and made one of the most delightful dinners. I thought, well, this is really delightful. I can’t remember a dinner as nice as this. Wives regularly do these kind of things for husbands—acts of adoration and devotion to them. It doesn’t help them. All it does is make a bunch of dishes afterwards that have to be cleaned. You’re going to make a nice, beautiful meal. You’re going to dirty a lot of dishes. You’re putting—you’re standing there in the kitchen all day long, but you’re doing it. My wife did it as a picture of her devotion and adoration and love for me.

And you know, I hate to say it, but probably it’s only been in the last few years that I see these things and fully see them for what they are.

Well, Mary’s act of adoration is that and much more as we’ll see as we go through the text.

Now, I’m going to look at this text in brackets as we move toward the heart of the matter, which is this question by Judas. Why does she do this instead of this? Which I think is the heart of this matter laid out for us in the literary structure of the text. This moment—this defining moment—happens at the center. We have light and shadow here. You know, the Lord, this is still the section of John’s gospel where Jesus is the light of the world. Light also casts shadows on the darkness. So we have a beautiful, brilliant light of a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we get to the disciples at the last supper, it’s going to be primarily exposition by Jesus, the focus is on what Jesus is teaching his disciples. But at this next to last supper, the focus is on what the disciples, pictured by Mary, do for Jesus.

You see? And so it is this defining moment that defines who we are as light and also, as I said, shows the tremendous darkness of all people outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, pictured in Judas, who cannot understand what’s happening.

Now this is a definite pericope—use a big word—it’s a section of scripture that serves as a unit. How do we know this? Because verse one tells us quite clearly a time reference: six days before the Passover is when this happens. And verse 12 says, “The next day, a great multitude that had come to the feast when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him and cried out.” So, we’re given a specific sequence of days.

Now, those of you that have been here the whole couple of years we’ve been preaching on John will remember something here. A sequence of days, “the next day,” these days here. What does that remind us of? That reminds us of the very opening chapters of John’s gospel—the days of discipleship, I call them. But it seemed like a week of seven days leading up to the narrative structure of the rest of John’s gospel. There was a pronunciation of days and a declaration of them, they’re making clear of them. And here we have a declaration of certain days.

And we’ll get to that in just a minute. But notice now that the point is that verses 1 to 11 are defined as a unit. God wants us to see them as a particular unit of scripture. And that’s the way we’re going to take them. It’s my understanding of the text and that’s the way we’re going to look at it. And we’re going to look at it by matching the bookends up.

Okay. So we begin with the text by first of all noticing in verse one we read: “Then 6 days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was who had been dead whom he had raised from the dead.”

Now I drew this reminding us of the opening chapters of John’s gospel. What is John’s gospel at its heart? What is it? It’s a declaration of the new creation. “In the beginning” is the way it starts, just the way the creation account in Genesis starts. John’s gospel is telling us it’s the height, it’s the highest peak of the gospel, so to speak. It’s the climax of the gospel accounts. And it declares a new creation. And this we’ll see very pointedly again at the end of the gospel. But for now, we see that we had an original creation week described in the opening sections of John’s gospel. And now we have the last week of the old creation set aside for us in a particular way: 6 days before the Passover, Jesus will be crucified. The right before Passover he’ll rise. The day after Passover we have a seven—or 8 day week being mentioned to us here at the conclusion of this first half of John’s gospel. It’s we’re going to have a new creation on that eighth day. It’s telling us that again and again. And it does that by pointing out that it was six days before.

These are not irrelevant details. They wrote with purpose—the gospel writers under the inspiration of the holy spirit.

Now this matches, I think, not just the six days but then the discussion that this is Lazarus mentions twice. He was dead. He was dead. But Jesus raised him up. He was dead. Jesus raised him. He was dead. Jesus is the giver of life here. And in contrast to Jesus, we have in verses 10 and 11 the chief priests. “But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also because in account of him, many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus.”

So at the beginning of this structure, we have a declaration again of Jesus the lifegiver and the giver of new creation and new life to the dead. And at the end of it, he contrasted with the chief priests who now want to murder not just Jesus but they want to kill Lazarus as well.

Now it’s interesting—and you wouldn’t necessarily know this—but the chief priests were Sadducees. The Sadducees were in control of the priesthood at this point in time, and the Sadducees are sad, you see, because they didn’t believe in the resurrection. They didn’t believe. Lazarus—I mean, their belief system was in direct opposition to the fact of the matter, right? Remember our quote a couple of weeks ago about evolutionists and how some of them are very forthright about the fact that they know their system doesn’t meet the scientific data, but it’s a belief system they hold.

Well, the Sadducees here want to put Lazarus to death because he is walking proof—not just of the attraction to Christ, but also that their doctrine is wrong. This shows the blindness of fallen man.

We have Jesus and the chief priests. We have Jesus, the giver of life. And then, as I quote from Proverbs 8:36, all them that hate me God says loves death. Love death. So if you reject the Lord Jesus Christ, you love death. And we’re seeing that in the chief priests. We see that in Judas here who is going to betray Jesus. Death is what marks them out.

We see this contrast between Jesus and the chief priests. And we see once more the incredible foolishness and blindness of those who, because they don’t believe in the resurrection, are going to kill somebody who was resurrected. And we’ll see in a little later in John’s, in this 12th chapter of the gospel, why that is. God hardens people’s hearts. He blinds them to the truth, and their blindness is being made evident to us here. So that when we get to the middle of chapter 12 and the quote citation from Isaiah, we’ll see that it is the sovereign Lord of all creation who has blinded the eyes of some and opened the eyes of others.

Okay, moving in then toward the center, the next thing that happens in verse two is the next to last supper. “There they made him a supper and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him.”

So as I said, Jesus now has this next to last supper, not quite the last supper yet, with his friends. He’ll meet with his disciples, but they’re different. I mean, you can think of that as two different events here. This is meeting with his friends as opposed to the last supper with the disciples.

Now, there’s a correlation here because what’s going to happen—we know in this text—is that Mary is going to anoint Jesus’s feet. Matthew and Mark point out that she also anointed his head and his whole body, but here they stress on feet. And when we get to chapter 13, we’re not going to see the normal stuff we see about the Last Supper. But what we will see is Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. You see?

So we’ve got a supper at the beginning of the week, a supper just before Jesus is crucified. And they match up: friends and disciples, feet and feet, right? And if there’s a preparation that Mary is doing in relationship to Jesus, that will inform us about something about what Jesus does when he washes the feet, attends as a servant to the feet of his disciples. So it tells us something about us. Now it’ll tell us something about his disciples when we get to chapter 13 as well.

I want to make another comment here. There has been over the years, of course, much discussion about Mary and Martha. Here again, here Martha is the one who serves right now, and you will remember that in the synoptic gospels there’s a story of Jesus coming to the house of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And what happens? Martha serves. Mary sits where? Remember? Just sits at his feet, right? So, she’s at his feet every time we see Mary. Mary earlier in the resurrection of Lazarus goes out before Lazarus is brought up and goes down to his feet. Well, anyway, Mary is the one who does that, listens to the words of the teacher in the synoptic gospels, and Martha’s the one that’s serving. And Martha says, “Hey, you know, tell her to get serving.” And Jesus says, “No, she’s chosen the better part.”

Now, I don’t want to, you know, there are women who kind of—they’re more Marthalike in the world in the Christian church, many of them. And I don’t think we should think of Martha here as some kind of bad person. I don’t think that’s the point of what I want to say. I mean, I think that service is really what it’s all about anyway. And how are you going to serve? So, I think Martha’s service here is not a negative thing. It’s a good thing.

However, if there’s an option between service and adoration, right away we’re kind of—it’s intimated here—that the adoration of Mary—both listening to the words of the savior sitting at his feet as a disciple and now loving him by giving up very expensive perfume and showering that upon him—that adoration must take preeminence over service. I think we are given that in these gospel accounts—not the dominant theme, not to say that it’s not good to be a Martha, but all Marthas should at some point in time stop the service.

You know, it’s difficult having a big meal here every Wednesday and, you know, sometimes we’re tempted to have some of the food workers go do. And in some churches, some reformed churches, you know, the women would regularly be gone the last half of the service cooking the food. Well, you know, I think this is the worship of Christ. This has to have preeminence over the preparation for the meal or anything else we do. And that’s why we want the workers all in here for the formal worship service. It reminds us of the primacy of worship and the pattern that should exist in the context of the rest of our lives as well.

So we have a little bit of that now.

Now matching this—the next to last supper—is verse, I think nine. “Now a great many of the Jews knew that he was there and they came not for Jesus’ sake only but that they might also see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead.”

Now so now we find out at the end of the text something about this meal that’s going on where people are serving. We find out there’s a whole bunch of people there—at least in the immediate context. Whether at the meal or not I’m not sure—but in the immediate context we find out that on this sixth day before Passover there’s a bunch of people there. And we’re also told why they’re there. And it is not just to see Jesus. It’s to see Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

And I think that we could make the application here that our lives, lives of hope lived out in the context of a world that desperately needs hope, we should be an attraction to people to come to the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether it’s the formal worship or come in the sense of coming to believe in him in the context of our week. We’re to be lights. I’ve got a book, “Your Home, a Lighthouse.” Our homes should be lighthouses shining forth the truth of the resurrection life. We’re the Lazaruses today. And I think that it is proper to say that there is something to be said: that our lives of commitment to Christ should be such that the world sees and is drawn to that light.

And so we see that here.

All right. Moving, continuing to move into the center. Then we have the actual act of adoration described in verse three.

“Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair and the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.”

Oh, what a wonderful picture. This is this defining moment thing. This is who a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is. This is Jesus said wherever the gospel is preached, it’s going to be accompanied by the story here. This story should be, you know, burned into our hearts and into our minds. This picture that this verse gives to us.

Mary takes a pound of exceedingly costly oil of spikenard. This oil—we’ll learn later at Lazarus, or Judas says—it could have been sold for 300 denarii. Now, that amount is noticed in the synoptic gospels as well. It’s an important detail. A denarius was a day’s wage. A typical day’s wage. So, today we’d have to say that this oil was worth about—I don’t know—what, how much do people make on average? $35, $40,000? Median income, $40,000. And Mary pours this oil out and causes it all to go to waste. This is in the mind of Judas. This wonderful act of adoration. But the evaluation of this is that not only did she do this, but then the fragrance of this filled the whole house. So here we have this—we could talk about the primacy of adoration here. The act of adoration itself.

Well, Mary takes a pound of this ointment, spikenard. What is it? Well, we don’t know. Spike—the word that’s translated spike in the text—could be genuine or it could be pistachio. They really don’t know. Nard is a commonly understood thing. This was a perfume made from a plant that grew in northern India and Tibet.

So, the providence of God—as we prepare—some of us—to give offerings and to help our children, help other children go to India, hopefully this picture of nard remains in their minds and our minds. Hopefully, you know, the group of a dozen or so that go in December to India will be doing this first and foremost at the heart of what they’re doing, whether it started that way or not. After this sermon, Lord willing, it’ll be an act of devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re taking valuable time away from work, from school, from Christmas, with their family and friends, and they’re pouring this out to help people in India. That’s nard. See, that’s the same thing that’s going on here.

So hopefully part of the preparation for the missions team is this commitment to devotion to Jesus, love and adoration for him being the heart of what is driving this group to go to India and what is driving people to give generously to support their trip.

So spikenard—she does this thing. It is of great sacrifice, adoration. What we’re talking about here, at the center of the Christian life, is the adoration of Christ. This is an adoration that is self-sacrificial, you know. It’s my wife standing there for hours. It’s other women in the church standing for hours, doing something self-sacrificially, okay? It’s not doing something that pleases you. It’s doing something that is self-sacrificial that hurts you, okay? So to speak. And Mary’s act—that’s to be proclaimed everywhere the gospel is—is that kind of act.

Secondly, it’s an act of service. She anoints Jesus. And I—we could say, we will say when we get to the triumphal entry next week, that there’s an anointing of a king here. But he becomes king through the cross. And there’s a big, obviously a big theme going on here. We’ll talk about that more next week. But she anoints Jesus and she anoints specifically the feet of Jesus.

Now, in the other accounts, it also says she anoints his head. Well, here she anoints his feet. What is the picture? The picture is of humble submission. The picture is self-sacrificial adoration to Christ that says, “I am your servant. I am at your feet. I am your foot servant.” You see? So this act of adoration that’s to be a model to us is self-sacrificial. It is engaged in service. It creates—you know, it is a result of our servant attitude toward the Lord Jesus Christ, and it involves an act of forgetfulness, we could say—self-forgetfulness, an unselfconsciousness. Because it says she anoints the feet and then she wipes his feet with her hair.

And commentators note this because in this particular time in the Palestinian culture, in the Israelite culture, when a woman got married the hair would go up and it would never be let down again in public. So here Mary forgets the social mores of her time and lets her hair down to wipe the feet of the savior. And what this tells us is that the kind of adoration that’s being given to us is a defining moment in what it means to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This adoration has a forgetfulness of our own posture or status in society to it. We’re going to find ourselves doing things that when people find out are going to say, “Well, person’s nuts.” It’s humbling to her, you see. Well, that’s what she does as this model.

And then it has this tremendous effect. The verse goes on to say, you know, adoration of Jesus that is self-sacrificial, that is service-oriented, and that is so engaged in giving to the savior that you forget who you are and forget trying to keep a good appearance to other people while you adore the Lord Jesus Christ. The effect of this is that the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.

And again, here many commentators have noted that we have to take this as a picture of the effect of this model for us on the world. After all, the world is the house of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the adoration of Mary fills that house. And the adoration of the people of Christ—self-sacrificial, servantlike, self-forgetful in their adoration and love to Jesus—fills the whole world, and that has an effect upon the whole world. That I think is what’s given to us by way of symbol.

This adoration is not given to a particular purpose other than love and gratefulness and thankfulness to Jesus. But the end result of losing ourselves in that kind of adoration is that the world becomes fragrant. You become that sweet smell, and the world becomes a sweet smelling place because it is brought to that same act of devotion and adoration for the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, it’s just a beautiful picture for us here of love’s extravagance. And then the result of love’s extravagance in the context of its effects upon the world.

Now this act is explained. The other part of this bookend, as we move toward the center, is this act of adoration is explained by Jesus in verse 7.

Now Jesus says: “Let her alone. She has kept this for the day of my burial.”

He explains what’s going on and he says first of all she’s done this for the day of my burial. So there is this anointing for self-sacrificial death and enablement of Christ, as it were participation in his self-sacrificial death, that will have this effect of the salvation of the world. And that’ll be the theme in the rest of chapter 12. All the world goes after him, the Pharisees say, and then the Greeks come and seek him. All this will be accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ.

“If I’m lifted up, I’ll draw all men to me.”

Not lifted up as king first, but lifted up on the cross and then beyond. You see? And so Mary is picturing this burial in her anointing process.

And then he tells us an absolutely remarkable thing. And again, if we don’t know our Bibles very well, verse 8 is not properly understood. And if you don’t know the culture very well, it isn’t understood either. Jesus says this absolutely astonishing thing:

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

Well, this is remarkable. You know, Judas wants them to use the money for the poor. And Jesus says, “I’m more important than the poor.”

Now, the remarkable thing about it—and this really is important—to understand what he’s saying and not saying—is that this is a citation from Deuteronomy 15:11. In Deuteronomy 15:11, we read, “The poor will never cease out of the land. Therefore, I command thee, saying, you shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy, and to the poor in the land.”

Now, Jesus expects us to bring all of that into his citation of the first part of the verse. He doesn’t just like half of the law. He likes the whole verse. And he wants us to know the verse. He doesn’t want us to take this verse and somehow say, “See, well, helping the poor—what good does that do? They’ll always stay poor. They’ll always be poor. Forget it. Let’s just focus on the church. No, that is not.” If you do that, it is a complete denial of what this text says.

Jesus says, on the other hand, that if you understand how important it is to give to the poor as a Christian, then and only then can you understand the primacy—the great, high, magnificent priority—of the adoration and worship of Jesus. I mean, he is definitely placing it as a higher priority, but a higher priority than what is almost the highest priority in our lives.

And the Deuteronomy text doesn’t say you’re going to have a lot of poor—forget them. It says you’re going to have a lot of poor—help. And Jesus will say in other places in the gospels that if you’ve given to the poor you’ve given to me. There’s a sense in which our obligations to Christ are fulfilled through the giving of alms, and we’ve stressed that in this church. So if you understand that, don’t bring down your obligations to the poor as you look at this text. Bring up the importance to you and the centrality of the adoration, love, and worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what the text wants us to do.

It’s also remarkable because the poor here were really, really poor. We read the tax and we think of America. Well, you know what? How far would $30,000 do to help the poor people in Oregon City? They’ll just blow it. But at this time, they’re under Roman oppression. Unemployment is probably 30, 40%. Inflation is maybe 70, 80%. It is galloping because of the currency exchanges going out and stuff. People are starving to death. People are homeless all over the place. I mean, the poverty is great and severe.

And Jesus is saying, “No, don’t give it to those starving people on the street. It’s more important that you adore and worship me.” Now, that’s what Jesus says here. You see, that’s what Jesus says. He explains this act. He talks about the priority of the adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ to really every other task.

If you take giving to the poor as a very important thing—as we Christians do, understand now the great importance—but the heart of our being a Christian is the primacy of adoration in the context of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what we have been created to do. This is who we are in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary is this example of who we are.

Now, what are the implications of this?

Well, the implications are pretty strong, you know. We can talk about some real practical sort of issues. What’s going on in adoration is the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, remember when we looked at the miracles of this book? The two central miracles are the feeding of the 5,000 and then the crossing of the sea. Remember what we talked about there? The special presence of Christ. He comes Lord’s day worship on the mountain to feed us. He’s the good shepherd, much grass. But then immediately the next day or the next evening, they’re cast out away. The special absence of the Lord Jesus Christ while the disciples—you and I—row across the lake all night long getting nowhere, and finally he comes. But his eyes have been on us the whole time.

The presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is here in the context of worship, the special presence. We do not always have Jesus with us. Now, we don’t have him with us bodily here, but we do have his presence in worship, as R.C. talked about last week. And tomorrow we don’t have that same presence. The rest of the days of the week we’re rolling across the lake. We have the special absence of Christ.

So I think that a proper application of this text is that what we do right now, what we do in this hour and a half or so Sunday morning, is the most important thing you can do for all of your lives. Mary gives us the picture: the adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why we talk all the time about how you dress and being here on time and being in here instead of downstairs cooking or being here instead of doing something else. That’s how we go over and over and over. It’s what Mary’s central act of adoration was: giving sacrificially—over time her money, whatever it was—to the Lord Jesus Christ and worshiping him.

Why do we talk, you know, there are people that say, “Why build beautiful church buildings? That money should be given to the poor. Forget church structures.” They’re dead wrong. When we pour money into the physical structure of the church, it is an act of adoration, self-sacrificial adoration to the Lord Jesus Christ, to create environments of beauty in which our adoration is, in the context of which, enhance adoration is a high priority. It is higher than the other priorities.

I mean, you could say, “What do you think is more important: the beauty team or the benevolence team? Which is more important?” And I will tell you that I think that there’s a sense in which we can make a good case for the beautification team. Now that’s kind of shocking, isn’t it? But you know by now I can say that now because you know for two years how much we have stressed benevolence in this church, how we tie it into the very act of communion itself, and how we’re more and more trying to develop systems that we can engage benevolent activities in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But Jesus says more important than helping the poor is the adoration of him—what she’s done. So to spend money on a building, to spend time and effort trying to beautify the building, the physical structure for the worship of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—these are good things.

Why do you come to church? Why are you here? You know, we have this time first of prelude music playing, right? Prelude music playing, and then we do the song of procession. I’m going to ask you to be careful during the prelude time not to see it as a chatty time for 15 minutes and then boom, worship starts. Your adoration—I’m going to ask you to take the spirit of what we’re doing with that prelude time in which it’s given to you by your elders. It’s given to you to help you make preparation of your heart for the adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ in worship. It’s a reminder to us that we do not come here first to fellowship and secondly to worship. It’s a reminder that we come here first to worship, and our fellowship flows out of that primacy of adoration to the Lord Jesus Christ in his special presence with us here in the context of formal worship. That’s what church is.

You—we have been restored—and the text climaxes here, this first half of the gospel, by telling us that this is the picture of what Jesus has accomplished. He has given back to us the missing jewel in the life of every created being. The missing jewel is worship and adoration for our creator and redeemer. That is everything to us.

And that’s what he shows us in this text. That’s why it’s not okay to be a Christian six, seven days a week and never to come to worship. You—if that’s what people think, and if you know friends like that, you got to tell them that is absolutely dead wrong. God says the most important thing in your life is coming together on the Lord’s day and adoring the Lord Jesus Christ, worshiping him, laying out self-sacrificial offerings to him. All this stuff—it all fits together in the primacy of the adoration of Christ that has given to us here in this jewel of the text.

You know, you’ll go to church on Sundays to see friends. You go to church to worship God, to adore him. You don’t go to church, you know, to check it out, writing a book about church. I remember years ago there was a reporter that came from Oklahoma’s school—the Bible school’s little newspaper they had. And they were taking little notes in the context of the worship service.

Now, hopefully they went to worship someplace that Lord’s day, and this was in it for them, because you don’t go to church to make intellectual determinations about this, that, and the other thing. When you go on vacation, you go to a church. Don’t go with a critical spirit. Go to worship and adore the Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t go to church to get perspective on how things should be. You go to church to worship. You don’t go to church to find a girlfriend or a boyfriend or other friends. Those are all wonderful blessings that God gives us when we place the adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ as primary in the context of our homes.

Let me say a word too about family worship this way. You know, it’s not the special presence that the worship of Christ is in the convocated host, but it is a defining element for your family to engage in family worship. And men, the mistake—over and over I’ve heard for 20 years, and probably a lot of it’s my fault, my style of preaching or whatever it is—I’ll take the blank. But don’t do it anymore, okay? Here’s the problem: guys think that it’s a big exposition time, that we’re going to study the scriptures and I’m going to read two, three chapters and I want you all to listen to it and understand how important it is. That is not the deal.

A verse, two verses, adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ—that’s the deal. You see? More important, I would rather have you read a single verse and then sing a song, a song of adoration to Christ, at the beginning or end of the day, than to read a chapter of scripture and go through a detailed three-point exposition of it. You see? And your family would rather it. That’s the need they have.

If this is defining element of what we are as Christians—the worship and adoration of Christ—that’s what your children need to be raised to understand. The church is the first, or the family rather, is the first and best church and state and school for the little ones. And that’s what you teach them. That family worship, when done correctly, is the primacy of their adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have a handout downstairs. It’s a rough one. I should have probably made a better version, but—”Awake My Soul and with the Sun.” Some of you who heard this. It’s sung to “Praise God All Blessings Flow,” written by the same guy. And there’s a morning song and an evening song. This is the morning song. Pick it up downstairs. If you’re struggling in family worship, just say, “We’re going to read a verse or two today, kids. And then we’re going to sing this song and we’re going to pray and do our thing. We’re going to go on mission into the world.” Make it simple. Understand the priority of worship and the adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the workplace, too, there’s significance of this text. This is what you do. You cannot be self-sacrificial using your money if you don’t have any money, right? If you’ve not been able to save up a year’s wages to buy an alabaster bottle of perfume to give to the Lord Jesus Christ in adoration. If you don’t have a thousand bucks saved up to give in adoration to Christ—not your tithe, but an offering to help missions, to help Blake Purcell train pastors in Russia.

If you don’t have a thousand, two thousand bucks saved up, you can’t do it. So, we need to be diligent in our work. Now the providence of God—sometimes it doesn’t pay off economically. Usually it does. Diligent in our work, diligent in our finances, our vocation is important because not only is it important so that we can then use the money for the adoration of Christ, you produce the very nard that’s going to be used in that adoration.

What do we do here with the tithes and offerings? You bring the result of your labor. You labor six days. You work hard at your job, and then you bring all of that to the foot of the cross here. And by way of picture, the tithe and offerings—you give all of that to Christ in adoration to him. You see? That’s why we work so that we can bring everything in the created order, develop it, make it beautiful. Take those ugly-looking, weird spikenard plants and make beautiful-smelling ointment and lay it at the feet of the cross.

That’s what work is. The primacy of adoration has implications for the workplace.

Now, continuing on then into the next movement—we’ve gone past the primary adoration, the explanation of the Lord Jesus Christ of what she’s done, and then we see the betrayer and three thiefs given to us.

Verse four: “Then one of his disciples, Judas, Iscariot, Simon’s son, who would betray him, says something.”

And then in verse six, corresponding to this, we’re told another fact about Judas. We’re told that he’s a betrayer in verse four. In verse six, it says, “Then he said not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief and had the money box and he used to take what was put into it.”

You see? Mary acts. Jesus explains it. Judas doesn’t act. He’s going to say something, and Jesus explains the text tells us why he’s saying it. And what the text does, when we look at it that way, when we look at it in terms of this structure, we’re going to a central point. It lines these things together. And what does it tell us about Judas? It tells us he’s a betrayer, and it tells us he’s a thief.

And what it does for us is it ties in thievery with betrayal. It says that if you hold back the money properly due to God, if you’re a thief, you’re a betrayer of the very God that you say you serve. Judas’s betrayal is tied to this incident. It’s tied to his thievery. And that’s not odd either if we understand the scriptures, because that was Adam’s fault. He stole forbidden fruit. He didn’t want to wait till Dad said it was okay. He took the cookie without waiting. He was a thief. He stole from God the Father. And Judas is a thief.

And let me tell you something here. I don’t normally talk about money. You know, if you’re visiting with us today, I don’t talk about money much here, but I have to talk about it here because what this text tells us is that if we’re robbing from God the way Judas did—taking consecrated money—it is equated here with his betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, Malachi says, “Why will a man rob God?” And they say, “Well, I didn’t rob God.” We had some kids, you know, rob God here—some crazy, ignorant college kids living next door. They took four little paving stones from underneath our garbage cans. And one day I walked over there. We—they just showed up missing, and walked over there to ask them to keep their yard a little cleaner. And there were our paving stones sitting in front of their front porch. I thought, “You fools. Don’t you know what you’ve done here? You’ve stolen from God. I mean, the church is a representation of God in the neighborhood. The people, you know, that’s sacrilege. Sacrilege is theft from God. That’s what it means.” These foolish people today going to OSU dorms.

I mean, college kids being so foolish and stupid as to steal from your neighbor, first of all, and leave what you stole in plain view. That’s pretty dumb. But to actually steal from God and not have a sense of fear about that—well, the same thing’s true of you and I. Malachi says, “You stole from me in tithes and offerings.” Not just tithe. You know, Mary’s gift is not a tithe. Your obligations for adoration to Christ are not completed with the tithe. Tithe is the obligation. The offering of Mary goes way beyond her tithe.

You see? So God says, “If you do not give to me the tithe, you’ve stolen from me. You’re under the curse. It’s as if you betrayed me.”

So the text links the thievery to the betrayal of Judas. If you don’t, you know, pay God what is owed to him—how did you get what you got in that checkbook you have? You got it because the Lord God gave you the ability to suck breath, to draw breath last week, and to work. And he trained your hands to do work. And then he rewarded you through an employer. That’s how you got it. And you’re not going to acknowledge him in that. You’re not going to give him 10% of your income—a paltry 10%—when you give the state 40% and don’t revolt against it. You won’t give God 10.

And you think he doesn’t notice. The text tells us to thieve, to steal from God, is like betrayal of God.

And Malachi talks about offerings as well. We’re going to encourage the church, if possible—and you know, I know times are tough and money is hard to come by—but we’re going to want to encourage you this next year to give sacrificially to offerings. You have an act of adoration available to you this next year. How can you adore the Lord Jesus? You can support pastors being trained in Russia who will take an understanding of the presence of Christ in worship and the primacy of worship. And you can populate regions of Russia with those men. You can do that.

For $500 a month, we can support a full-time seminary student who become a pastor. In all likelihood, you can help these young people go to India. You can give money to support a pastor in Poland. $250 a month and we could probably support a man in Poland pastoring, bringing the special presence of Christ to bear in the midst of a congregation, encouraging them to see, at the very center of who they are, the adoration and worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, so you know, I mean, don’t go in debt to do any of this stuff. If you don’t have resources to make offerings, don’t do it. But pray that God would give you diligence and carefulness in your economics so that sometime in your life you can move toward offerings as well as giving God what is absolutely owed to him—the tithe.

These texts tell us that really the thievery is connected to betrayal, and this is at the heart of the dark side of this text—the negative dark portrayal of who Judas is.

Let me just note in passing—I could spend a whole sermon on this—but let me just note in passing that Judas’s tact here is a common one. He uses the poor as an excuse to feather his own nest. And we’ve got legislators in all 50 states and in the national legislative assemblies who use the poor every day of their lives to justify their own power and their own economic well-being. It happens every day in our lives.

The civil government—this is the art of governance—is to appeal to the poor. It’s for the poor. It’s for the children. It’s for these poor people. And give us more of your hard-earned money. Give us the money that you should be able to give at the foot of the Lord Jesus Christ in adoration and sending a young person to India or supporting a pastor in Poland or Russia. The state takes all of that. They do it in the name of the poor. The state is a Judas state when it does that. And it does it over and over again in our day and age.

May God deliver us from such oppressors.

But then we come to the very central part of the text. We come in now to—now we’re finally at the heart of the matter. And this—I, and you know—the primacy of adoration was my first title. But at the heart of the matter, I think, in terms of the structure of the text itself, seems to me is the incomprehensibility of adoration.

Judas’s question is asked by every man: “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? Why do you build a church building? Why do you make it beautiful when we got poor people, we got people that need help? We got middle income people who can’t afford to buy their own house. So why aren’t you helping them do that? Why build big churches? Why build those cathedrals in the Middle Ages? Weren’t they terrible people? Because they put all this money into adoration.”

And you know, in Judas’s case, it has kind of a, you know, a hook to it. He’s trying to feather his own nest. But I’m telling you that I think the text tells us that what I have talked about today is incomprehensible to maybe some of you and maybe to people that will hear this sermon by tape. It may be incomprehensible to you, because I think it is completely incomprehensible and ridiculous apart from the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What God does when he brings us to salvation is to correct our priorities. We always put man first and God second. God says, “No, no, your priorities must be realized. I come first, mankind second. Your job—you know, the purpose of man is not to enjoy God forever and then glorify him. Your job is to glorify him and then enjoy him forever.” The only way you will be satisfied and happy is by having adoration at the center of who you are.

Do you get it? Do you get this text today? Do you see the importance of the adoration of Christ? You do—you say, “Well, silly woman,” or do you say, “Yeah, that’s who I should be, but I haven’t done very well in acts of adoration for the Savior. I haven’t done well in committing myself to him in kind of extravagant, self-sacrificial ways, whether it’s time or money or energy or whatever it is.”

To the worldly mind, here’s what Archbishop William Temple said: “To the worldly mind, the acts of devotion are always foolish.” They’re always foolish. The incomprehensibility of these acts of adoration.

You know, we have to be careful. We want to avoid pietism, you know—an ungodly pietistic addition to the laws of God. God gives us very simple laws, easy to follow for the most part, and life is great, and you’re supposed to rejoice in it. And people are wrong who tell you otherwise. But we want to be very careful that we do not deride, make fun of people in their adoration for Jesus.

It’s interesting that not just Judas but Matthew and Mark tells us the disciples—a number of the disciples—are saying the same thing as him. We are prone to not understand this act, to make false attributions to it, and to question the motives of people that act in extravagant ways in their love for Jesus. We’re prone to do that, and we have to be very careful that we don’t do that.

You know, as we think about the vision of this church, we’re having another meeting Saturday. I’m so pleased, so far, you know, that what we’re doing is we’ve got all kinds of pragmatic stuff: the extension of the kingdom, mission, help to the poor, help to families, all that stuff. But the kernel of what we are as a church, the beginning point of the vision, is what we’ve talked about today. It’s Mary’s act of adoration, because we get it. The people that are coming together to form this vision team and then the implementation of it throughout the church—I think we get that worship, adoration, and adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ is at the absolute heart of what we are as a people.

You know, A.W. Tozer said the purpose of God in sending his son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that he might restore to us—and I referred to this earlier—he might restore to us the missing jewel: the jewel of worship, that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place—worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling it, expressing it, and then having that undergird our labors as we go into the rest of the week.

May God grant us that we be a congregation known for our adoration of Christ.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you again for this wonderful text, the beauty of it, the simplicity of it. We pray, Lord God, you would help us, give us the eyes of the Holy Spirit to understand the necessity and great delight there is in acts of self-sacrificial, extravagant acts of adoration for Jesus. Help us—