A Portrait of Extravagant Worship John 12:1-11

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1 Before Reading the Passage: A Portrait of Extravagant Worship John 12:1-11 There are certain scenes in scripture that seem too sacred and too priceless to touch. It's almost as if the Lord says to us, Take the shoes off your feet, you are standing on Holy ground. -John records the last week of our Lord's life here on earth. It records His final hours on earth. We come here with a high sense of respect and reverence. -It is as though the Holy Spirit is saying, Here is where He spent His final days. Here is what He did and this is the way He died. Just be quiet and experience it. Take time to feel the emotion and to grasp the significance of these words. Simon, a leper that Jesus had healed, invited Jesus and His disciples to a dinner meal. Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead, was there, alone with Mary and Martha. Seventeen people in all. What a beautiful scene this is! -Simon opens his Home to Jesus. Martha opens her Hands and serves the guest, Mary opens her Heart of love and anoints the head and feet of Jesus with a perfume worth a year's wages, between 20,000 and 25,000 dollars in today's economy. -The essence of love is to ask, How much can I do; not, How little can I do. Love has no limits and neither does hatred as we shall see as we look at the first recorded words of Judas. Mary is about to express extravagant love to our Lord as she takes a pound of spikenard and anoints the head and feet of our Lord. -A Roman pound was twelve ounces; not sixteen. Why was the spikenard so expensive? Spikenard grows in the Himalaya mountains in India at high elevations from 11,00 to 17,000 feet. The roots and spikes of the plant were used to make perfumes. Mary is about to express extravagant worship upon the Lord Jesus. The word extravagant is defined as spending too much, by spending excessive; beyond what is reasonable, of going overboard and doing too much. -When it comes to worshiping our Lord Jesus, nothing is too extravagant. After all, He is worthy of everything we can render to Him, because all we have comes from Him anyway. No gift is excessive; no expression of love is over the top. -The worship of Mary has much to teach us about our own worship of the Lord Jesus. Gloria Gaither and Bill George wrote a song based on John 12, entitled Broken and Spilled Out. I would like to change the word Spilled to poured, because when you spill something, it is an accident. What Mary did was intentional. Listen to the words: One day a plain village woman Driven by love for her Lord Recklessly poured out a valuable essence Disregarding the scorn 165 And once it was broken and spilled out A fragrance filled all the room Like a prisoner released from his shackles Like a spirit set free from the tomb.

2 Just for love of you, Jesus My most precious treasure Lavished on thee And poured at your feet In sweet abandon Let me be spilled out And used up for Thee. Lord, You were God's precious treasure His loved and His own perfect Son Sent here to show me the love of the Father Just for love it was done. And though your were perfect and holy You gave up Yourself willingly You spared no expense for my pardon You were used up and wasted for me. Just for love of me, Jesus My most precious treasure Lavished on me And poured at my feet In sweet abandon Let me be spilled out And used up for me. Read the passage: What a beautiful scene this is. I can imagine the conversation that must have taken place during that meal. -Simon must have told how the Lord healed him of leprosy. How the rottening flesh had grown back and now was as smooth as a baby's flesh; how his fingers that had fallen off reappeared; how his eyebrows had grown back; how much he loved the Lord for all that he had done. I think Lazarus must have said, Well, that's nothing, Simon. I was in another world for four days. I saw the biggies - Abraham, Moses, David, and all the rest. And I saw Paradise! But when I walked out of that tomb and they loosed me from those grave clothes, Peter's eyes were as big as plates! -They must have asked Lazarus all kinds of questions: What did you see on the other side? What was it like to come back to life? 166 Now we come to the heart of the passage. Watch as Mary expresses her love for Jesus! Three things I want you to see: I. The Devotion of Mary John 12:3 Mary's heart was about to burst with love for Jesus and she just had to show Him how much she

3 loved Him. She gets up from the table, goes to get an expensive vial of perfume and anoints our Lord's head and feet. Matthew 26 and Mark 14 record this incident and they call the vial of perfume an Alabaster Box. -You need to know what an alabaster box is. It is actually a small vase which held about twelve ounces of costly perfume. The perfume was so precious that a special vase was made for the perfume. It was made of clay. The potter would shape the little vessel very carefully like he would any small vase until he got to the top. Then he would make a long, thin neck that could be easily broken to let out a small amount at one time, and after the perfume was put into the vase, he would seal it at the top so that all could be kept until a special time, and then be resealed. Mary loved her brother, but she did not put the treasured perfume on her dead brother. She saved it for Jesus! Watch her as she takes that alabaster box; breaks the top off, pours some of it on our Lord's head and some on His feet, and dries His feet with her hair. In Christ's day, people did not sit at a table to eat their meals. The tables they used were low to the floor, and the people reclined around the table at meal time. Typically, their heads were near the table while their feet were farther away. This would mean that anyone walking up to a person in such a position would be considerably taller than the person at the table. It is, therefore, assured that Mary would have assumed a kneeling position near Jesus, in order to anoint His head and His feet with the ointment. In this one moment of time, Mary was making a great statement of surrender. By kneeling to Him and anointing Him, she was declaring her faith in Him as the Messiah. She was telling everyone who saw her do what she did that her faith was in the Lord Jesus Christ. She, at that moment, surrendered all to Him! Mary was more in touch with Jesus than any of His disciples were. Jesus had said over and over that he was going to die, but none of them got it. In fact, only one person got it, and that was Mary. -The disciples were with Jesus much more than Mary and heard Him speak many more times than Mary, so why did she get it and they did not? Every time we see Mary, she is at our Lord's feet listening and learning and loving Him. Three times Mary appears in the Gospels center stage. (1)The first time she appears is at her own home. Martha is working, preparing a meal for Jesus and others and Mary is sitting at His feet listening to Him teach, Luke 10: (2)The next time we meet her is at the tomb of Lazarus. He has just died and Jesus has arrived at the tomb. Mary runs to Jesus and bows at His feet in supplication, John 11: (3)The last time we see her, she offers her worship to Him because of what He means to her, John 12:1-11; Mark 14:1-9; Matt, 26: The first time, she is at His feet Learning: Hearing His word. 2. The next time, she is at His feet Leaning, Experience His works, John Here, she is at His feet Loving: Declaring His worth, John 12 Washing feet was something a humble servant would have done. Mary was laying herself, her pride, her position, her everything aside and she wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair. When Mary did this, she was humbling herself and laying her glory at His feet because the glory of a woman is her hair, I Cor. 11:15.

4 You see, everyone there that day had a reason to worship the Lord Jesus: Lazarus had just been raised from the dead; but he was not worshiping, he was watching. Simon the Leper had been healed of Leprosy, and the God of Creation was dining at his house, but he wasn't worshiping, he is also watching. Martha had witnessed Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead just like Mary did, but she is not worshiping, she is working and worrying. Eleven of the disciples had experienced the saving touch of Jesus and were blessed to be with Him, but they were not worshiping, they are just watching. Judas Iscariot is in the presence of the only One who could save him from his sins and deliver his soul from hell, but he is complaining and finding fault, instead of worshiping. Mary is the only one worshiping and Jesus said that wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will be told as a memorial to her. I gave my life for thee, My precious blood I shed That thou might'st ransomed be, and quickened from the dead I gave, I gave my life for thee, What hast thou given for me? I gave, I gave my life for thee, What hast thou given for me? II. The Denouncement of Mary 12:4-6 Mark 14:4 says, they rebuked her harshly. The Greek indicates that they snorted their indignations like an angry horse. -Why would someone criticize another for doing a good deed? Someone said that it takes no size to criticize! These are the first recorded words of Judas in the N.T., and they reveal his heart. His complaint was about doing too much for Jesus. -Judas sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, or about 120 denarii. Mary gave an offering of twoand-a-half times that amount in worship of the Lord! -There are always those who think the church can do too much or give too much to the cause of Christ. Did you notice? It was Judas who incites her disciples to anger (Matthew 26:8) G. Campbell Morgan said, It's a great compliment to be criticized by certain people. Why this waste? - That's a year's wages worth! Listen, if she just had to wash His feet, she could have used water! Why go to the extreme? Why the waste? -Nothing we do for Jesus is a waste! Did you notice that Mary never tried to defend herself? She knew that even if she tried to explain, people with that kind of spirit would never understand anyway. They are the ask how little can we do for Jesus folks. They know nothing of the spirit of Mary in giving your best to the Master. John adds that Judas cared nothing for the poor, but was a thief. The Greek word for thief forms our English word kleptomaniac, which is a person who is a compulsive thief. He held the bag of money and he had been lifting, robbing, and pilfering from the bag all along.

5 III. The Defense of Mary Matt. 26:10-13 Leave her alone means, That's enough! Stop it! She had done nothing wrong and everything right! -Jesus didn't hesitate to come to Mary's defense and rebuke them. Matt. 26:10 She has done a good work upon me. There are two Greek words for good. One means morally good. The other word, which is used here, means something beautiful, winsome, lovely. It is communicated love. Why did Jesus call it a beautiful work? Because He was aware of her loving motive; her beautiful heart and spirit. There is a beautiful truth here: She could not pour the perfume on Jesus and wipe His feet with her hair without getting some on herself and blessing others as well. Many of us have unused perfume. We need to break a vase and anoint the Lord. He would be honored. We would be blessed and so would others.