Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to the Hope Community Church! Hope is a multi-site church community with locations around the Triangle in Raleigh, Apex, Northwest Cary, Garner, and Fuquay-Varina. We are here to love you where you are and encourage you to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ! We strive to speak the truth of the Bible in a way that is easy to understand, helpful in your current life circumstances, and encouraging. No matter who you are or where you come from, you are welcome here!
7: Well hope. How we doing today? Okay, uh,
it is great to see you. Uh, my name's Dwayne. I'm one of the pastors here.
And let's start with a word of prayer. Uh, to that end, father,
thank you for the day. Thank you for your grace and mercy. Uh, father,
would you today, um, hide me behind you?
I pray that the words in my mouth and the meditation in my heart,
that they would both be acceptable in your sight because none of what I say
today should be by my might nor by my power.
But only by your might and by your power and led by your spirit.
Father,
would you lead us and guide us towards your truth that's found in your word?
In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. You know, I have loved, uh,
this series for the past few weeks on prayer and it's been an interesting
series. Uh, we have seen God answer a lot of prayer.
We've seen God work and move, uh,
through the prayers of his people and through the praise of his people.
And I'm just so thankful.
Can we just give a shout to the Lord for that time over the last few weeks?
Yeah, praise God.
And we've been praying for a lot of things. Uh,
one of the big topics that we've been praying for around here is for the future,
uh, for the future of Hope Community Church. I mean, uh,
all of us have probably had a moment where we have looked to the future and
we've had great hopes for what it can look like or what it can be. Uh,
now when I think about the future, it takes me back to a time and listen,
I know that I'm dating myself here. Um, that was around a time,
that was around the eighties or so, uh,
because one of my favorite shows in the eighties that came on, oh,
was something called the Jetsons. Anybody remember a show called The Jetsons?
Yeah, yeah. We all old. Amen .
It was a great show and they talked a lot about the future.
And what was really cool about the Jetsons is because it was like a whole family
that lived in what they thought the future ought to look like.
And there were these things that they would show in the show that kind of caught
my attention because a lot of them came to life like,
like let me give you a few examples of what I'm talking about. Like,
they had this watch that one of the characters used to wear that had like a TV
on it, right? And if you look at it,
it looks eely similar to the watch that I'm wearing, the Apple Watch ,
they called it that long ago. Uh, now I don't know if we can watch TV yet on it,
but man, they called it a while back and it looks amazing. And,
and then there was this other thing they had where Jane, his wife,
as the show used to say it, she would work out from time to time.
And so she had this TV screen that was kind of on the wall.
And if you look at it like she was exercising with the screen,
well a few years back this thing came out called the Tonal that looks exactly
like what they predicted. It's amazing. And every time I look at that thing,
the tonal, I think to myself like,
sure if Planet Fitness being around the corner from our house won't get us to
exercise a TV turned sidewalls will certainly do the trick, right?
So the tonal will be a great thing, but man, they called it that long ago.
And then there's this little thing they had in the house that would sweep the
floors and clean up things.
It was a small robot that used to go around the house and clean. Well,
if you've ever seen a Roomba it, it looks just like that.
The only problem is the Roomba doesn't actually clean anything. Like,
let's just be honest. It just moves dirt from room to room like, but either way,
they called a lot of things when they looked forward to the future.
And here's what I know about the future.
They weren't the only ones that were looking to the future. As a matter of fact,
there was another guy in the 1980s who created a truck that he thought would be
the best truck ever. And it was this thing. He worked hard on it,
he put a lot of money into it, and he thought it would sell off the rack.
It would be a beautiful thing. Well,
it turned out everybody just thought it was ugly and it went away.
But then fast forward a few years ago and we created a truck that looks just
like it and now we pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.
Who knew? It's still ugly . But here's what I know.
I know that the future is something that we all look to.
The point is, is that oftentimes when we look to the future,
we don't know exactly what's gonna happen or exactly what to expect,
but many of the things that we desire actually come to fruition.
And what's important to note is that that coming to fruition doesn't happen
without intentional effort over time.
You don't go from the Jetsons to Tesla without somebody putting in the work
because the future's not some distant idea.
Actually the future is the product of our intentionality, of our decisions,
of our actions. And listen, if you are a young person in this room right now,
let me say this, your life will equal to some of your decisions.
It's not some magical thing that happens when things go awry.
It's usually the result of decision after decision after decision.
So when I think about the future,
and maybe even when you think about the future, the truth is,
is your decisions will tell the story. And when I think about the future,
it prompts me to ask the question like,
what do you think the future will look like?
Let me bring it a little bit closer to home. When you dream about your life,
when you look at the lives of your family and the lives of your children, uh,
when you look at those who you are in relationship with or,
or those you may not know and may be close in proximity to you,
what do you think the future is going to look like?
What are your dreams and your hopes and your aspirations
for yourself?
And what are your dreams and your hopes and your aspirations for your family or
for your community or for your country or for your world?
Like what do you think the future is gonna look like?
And the word that is most closely associated with what we think the future looks
like is a word we're gonna talk a lot about today. Uh, is the word legacy.
Legacy.
The idea of leaving a legacy is something maybe most of us are familiar with.
Uh, is the idea of leaving something that is long lasting,
it's a long lasting impact of particular events or actions or, or decisions, uh,
that lead to something in the future. So lemme just ask,
what do you want your legacy to look like
when it's all said and done,
when your life ends and we move to the next generation when things change and
all of a sudden you realize that the work that you have here on earth is
finished, what do you want your legacy to look like? Uh,
what will your legacy be? Uh,
let me ask it a different question because there's these individual legacies
that each of us leave with our lives,
but then there's this collective legacy that we leave as a church.
What will the legacy of Hope Community Church be
when we get to the future?
And legacy's a tricky thing because most of the time when we talk
about legacy, we associate it with us.
It is usually about us leaving money behind for somebody or us leaving
possessions behind for somebody or us leaving a reputation that speaks to our
name. Most of the time when we think about legacy,
we think about us and we put us in the middle of whatever it is that we wanna
leave behind.
It's usually about making a name for myself or making a name for my family.
But what if the greatest legacy that we would leave wouldn't be about us,
but instead would be about Jesus?
What if our legacy wasn't centered on who we are,
but instead centered on who he is? You know,
there's a great theologian named Billy Grim,
and I love the way that he talks about legacy because when he talks about
legacy, he says this,
the greatest legacy that one can pass on to one's children or one's
grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated over one's life,
but rather a legacy of character and faith.
What if we've been trying to create a legacy
centered on the wrong things?
So how does a person live a legacy like that? How do we leave a legacy of faith?
How do we leave a legacy that reaches into the future and sets the conditions
for our children or our grandchildren or people we don't even know where they
have the opportunity to step into a life of faith?
How do we as God's church hope community church leave a legacy for our community
that puts it in a better place to receive and respond to the hope that comes
from the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm talking about legacy.
While the world has this perspective on what legacy looks like,
the Bible tells a much different story.
And so that's where I want us to turn to figure out how we can live legacies of
faith and leave those legacies behind for generations to come.
So if you have your Bibles,
I want you to open up to Mark's gospel and in Mark's gospel, uh,
chapter 14, verses 3 2 9 through nine,
we're gonna look at the legacy of a life of faith.
And hopefully it'll give us some clues and I believe that it will on how we can
leave a similar legacy for generations to come.
And while you're turning to Mark 14 verses 3, 2, 9,
I want you to earmark over in John's gospel because this is captured.
This story is captured in both gospels. It's in John 12, one through three,
but also in Mark 14, three through nine.
And while you're turning to Mark's gospel,
let me just share a little bit of the context of what we're gonna talk about
today. Uh,
this passage is one that points to a woman and it's a woman who left a
lasting legacy of faith.
And this legacy is not something that she even set out to leave.
It's a byproduct that is left behind as a result of her faithfulness to follow
the Lord.
And I wanna be clear in saying that it's not her religious activity that leaves
a legacy, it's her faithfulness. You see,
this woman is a woman who Jesus actually knew personally and she
didn't know Jesus is a great teacher alone.
She knew him as a friend and her name was Mary.
And just know Mary's a very popular name in the Bible, .
And this Mary is very specific because you find her captured all throughout the
gospels.
This Mary is the one who's the sister of Martha and and Lazarus is her brother.
And they have all, all collectively decided to follow Jesus' teaching together.
And number of times throughout the Bible you see them hosting Jesus at their
homes on a number of occasions. And Jesus has changed Mary's life
and the way that she responds is through a life of faith.
And when you get to this passage in Mark, that faith is on full display, uh,
of verse three says this, while he,
Jesus was in Bethany reclining at the table in the home of Simon the leper,
a woman came with an alabaster jar, a very expensive perfume,
and it was made of pure nard.
And she broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
And some of those present were saying indignity to one another.
Why this waste of perfume? It,
it could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the
poor and they rebuked her harshly. Jesus says,
leave her alone. Why are you bothering her?
She's done this beautiful thing to me.
The poor you will always have with you and you can help in them at any time you
want, but you will not always have me. She did what she could.
She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly,
I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world,
what she has done will also be told in memory of her
legacy. And that same story,
if you flip over to John chapter 12 is shared as well. Verse one says,
six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus lived,
whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
And here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor,
Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.
And then Mary took about a pint of pure ard and expensive perfume and she poured
it on Jesus's feet and she wiped his feet with her hair and the
house was filled with the fragrance of perfume.
You know, I love this story
and I love it because it details an act, a sacrifice.
And we're gonna unpack that sacrifice in just a moment.
But it details away that this woman decided to leave a legacy of faith.
And it wasn't because she wanted a legacy,
it was just because she wanted to be faithful.
And I just wanna wanna start by saying,
and kind of setting the tone for our conversation,
that legacies of faith require a life of sacrifice.
She sacrifices something here and we're gonna unpack that.
But you need to know that this was no ordinary act.
That that it was an act of sacrifice. And,
and this shouldn't come as a surprise to us because the Bible talks about this
kind of sacrifice all throughout the New Testament. I mean,
we see Jesus calling us over and over again in the Bible to a life of sacrifice
and a life of worship, choosing instead of doing what we want to do,
doing what he wants to do. Lemme give you an example of what I mean. If you,
you were to flip over to Romans chapter 12 verses one through two,
the very words that are contained there is that we need to offer our bodies as
living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God.
8: Because.
7: This is what a life of proper worship looks like.
It looks like sacrifice.
It goes on to say that we shouldn't be conformed to the patterns of this world,
but we should be transformed instead by the renewing of your mind.
And that way we can test and approve what is God's perfect will,
his good pleasing and perfect will for our lives.
And what Paul is alluding to here and what Mary is living out in the text,
is that Jesus calls us to a life
of sacrifice,
to a life of giving up our will for his.
And when Romans 12 says,
to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God is saying that we need to be
the kind of people who submit our whole selves to the purpose of following
Jesus. Every single part of us, even our bodies,
is meant to follow God and to worship him fully.
8: There's.
7: Value and following him.
And we choose the value of following him versus the value that the world tries
to assign to our lives.
Mary is so committed to following Jesus and that she's willing to sacrifice for
it. And I believe that if we are committed to leaving that kind of legacy,
then as we examine a merry sacrifice,
it can give us some tips and some tools on how we can live similar lives of
sacrifice. Uh, let me show you what I mean.
There's some observations that we can just get from the text that shows us how
to live our lives in a sacrificial way.
And the first one is that sacrifice is costly.
To live a life that leaves a legacy,
it is gonna cost us something. I mean,
it could cost us our very lives here on earth.
The cost of her sacrifice, this, uh, perfume that she uses,
uh, this would've cost about 300 denari.
Now one denari is equal to one day's wages.
And so this would've cost her almost a year of wages.
This was no ordinary perfume.
It was imported from Jerusalem and there was no Amazon at the time.
You couldn't get a cheap version from Tamu.
This was real perfume. It was a year's salary.
It was in an alabaster jar.
And at the time there were no resealable ways to close the jar up.
So if you opened it and used it, you had to use the whole thing.
You couldn't push it to the side and save some for later.
She knows that when she opens this, it's gonna be costly.
It's gonna cost her something and yet she chooses to sacrifice it anyway,
to show honor to Jesus.
And her sacrifice is a testimony of how she valued Jesus.
She was willing to pay what it cost for year's salary just to honor him.
And if we are gonna be the kind of church family that leaves a legacy,
it's important for us to know.
And we must understand that there is a cost that comes with following
Jesus. It's gonna cost us something.
And where this normally hits home for us when we talk about the cost of
following Jesus,
is that in church we normally talk about time and talent and treasure and those
things are really important.
But what I've found is that those are not normally the things that trip us up
when we talk about this cost of following Jesus. Here's the truth.
The deeper you grow in your relationship with God,
the more likely you are to respond in ways of worship.
So the more likely you are and willing you are to give your time and your talent
and your treasure. And if those things are really difficult for you to share,
you gotta ask a question about your relationship.
Because the deeper we go the Lord,
the more easy it is for us to share of our time and our talent and our treasure.
But I can tell you the place where we normally get tripped up when it comes to
this life of sacrifice, it's not our time or our talent and our treasure.
I believe it is our hearts. It's when we have to make difficult decisions.
It's when we have to decide to stand for Jesus.
Let me give you some examples of what I mean. Uh,
the place where we struggle when it comes down to us submitting ourselves fully
to the Lord is when we have to decide between the world's way or God's way.
It is when we have to decide between our priorities or his priorities.
It's when we have to decide between our resources or our hearts,
it costs us something. And when we get to that place,
the truth is, is we have to ask the question,
are we willing to pay the cost? You see,
there's all these moments in our lives. You,
we have to decide between whether we're going to embrace Jesus
or we're gonna choose the world's way.
And Mary's sacrifice wasn't just costly in one way. Uh,
there was all kinds of cost to her because truthfully,
she's trying to figure out how to do this. She knows
she don't have much of what she has.
She's willing to give it to Jesus. You know,
following Jesus is going to cost us something. And we have to ask the question,
are we willing, willing to pay the cost?
Mary sacrifice costs her something.
And one of the things that it costs her is actually her reputation.
Because what she's doing in this moment is very counter-cultural.
And if we're gonna follow Jesus, we need to be people who are counter-cultural.
We will have to do things that go against the grain and that but the culture.
Because here's what I know is that leaving a legacy of faith will require us
to do things
that the culture doesn't believe that we should do.
Mary's sacrifice,
she steps into this moment and all of the things that she does in this moment
kind of go against the culture. Uh, lemme tell you what I mean.
Like she was in a room full of men and that wouldn't have normally been a space
where Mary would've been invited to unless she was there to serve food.
She wouldn't have been able to go into that room.
And she goes across that goes against the culture of the day and decides,
still I need to show honor to Jesus. Uh,
it wouldn't have been proper for Mary to wipe the feet of Jesus.
Nobody would've done that unless they absolutely adored him.
It wouldn't have been common to the day.
But yet she goes across this cultural line to honor
God. She would've been outta place and the culture would've scolded her.
As a matter of fact, they did just a bit. And Judas asks her,
why are you spending this much money? Because this is counter-cultural,
but she's willing to do it because she's not focused on the culture,
she's focused on Jesus.
And I think we spend so much time focusing on the culture,
but often Jesus becomes this distant idea.
And I don't know if this is challenging you maybe right now in your life,
but I have a few ideas of where these cultural decisions and these pathways are
starting to trip us up. Uh, maybe for you it's happening at school.
Maybe you got a professor or a teacher who's teaching something that goes
against the word of God.
And rather than stand as though you don't believe the Lord,
you know you have to fight. You have to fight for God.
And it's costing you something because you're being counter-cultural.
Uh, maybe it's happening at work where there's some language being utilized and
you're not comfortable with it
because you're a follower of Christ.
Maybe it's happening amongst your friend group, but you got a group of folks
that don't seem to want anything to do with God.
And I'm not telling you leave your friend group,
but just know that you don't have to go with everything the culture tells you
to do.
The courage that you need to find is the courage that Mary has to cross the
cultural line. And can I just encourage you with two things?
If you find yourself in a position like that, uh, one,
the courage that you need to be counter-cultural and following Jesus can be
found through prayer and through a deep trust in God,
he will give you the power that you need to be able to walk away or to stand
firm. And second, Jesus was also counter-cultural. Amen.
And then following him with a life of sacrifice,
it will mean that sometimes we have to be called a cultural as well. You see,
if we wanna live lives and legacies of faith,
and we will have to at times live lives that are counter-cultural, uh,
can I just say that a life of following Jesus can be that kind of life.
Like it's, it's always feeling like you're going against the grain. Uh,
because a life of worship is not a normal thing for our culture, uh,
it's not something that everybody does. It's not something that it's the norm.
And so when you begin to live a life of worship and following Jesus,
it will look a little bit different from the norm. And,
and that's okay. The Bible calls us a peculiar people. That's who we are.
You're gonna face opposition. Things are gonna be difficult.
And Mary faces opposition. Judas calls her on it.
He says,
why would you decide to spend this much money on this kind of sacrifice?
Now here's the truth. Judas used to help himself to the money bags.
And what he knows is that the money that comes in will probably end up in his
pocket. And so he becomes a naser pretty quickly. You don't need to do that.
You need to sell it and make some money.
Can I just say that there will always be somebody who has some words when you
decide to follow Jesus.
And not all of those words are gonna serve to point you towards him.
Some of those words are gonna be there to point you away from him.
But choosing to go against the culture and align with the Lord will never,
never leave you void.
It's a life of worship that allows us to sacrifice.
And this kind of leads me to the next thing that we see reflected in the text is
that her sacrifice is a real act of worship.
And if we're gonna be the kind of people who leave a legacy of faith through our
sacrifice, then we need to live lives of sacrificial worship.
We need to live lives of worship. You know, that jar of perfume was expensive.
Uh, it came from the Himalayan mountains and in her very own way, uh,
she has this opportunity where she has a chance to try to show Jesus what he
really means to her.
And so the only way that she knew in that moment how to worship was to take this
thing that would've amounted a treasure and to pour on Jesus.
And so she does this as an act of worship.
It's a way of her saying that God is above all things.
She takes this beautiful bottle and she pours it.
And Jesus himself says,
she has done this beautiful thing to me.
And her gift didn't make Jesus beautiful. He was already beautiful,
but it was an act of extravagant worship.
Can I just say worship
is much more than the 15 or 20 minutes before the sermon
on Sunday. Worship is the posture, uh,
of our lives. Uh, it is a lifestyle. Uh, Miriam,
we describes a lifestyle as the typical way of life for an individual or a
group or for a culture. And for the Christian,
the life of worship is supposed to be our lifestyle.
We choose to worship God both because of what he has done and because of who he
is and who we are. We are made to worship.
And just because we stop worshiping God doesn't mean we stop worshiping.
We usually take the object of our worship and put it on somebody else.
And we were made to worship.
We were designed to worship.
'cause worship is our purpose. Uh, it's our human purpose,
it's our wiring. I love the way Colossians explains, uh,
life of worship because it talks about this idea that we were made to worship
God. And her act of sacrifice is this kind of worship. Can I just ask,
can I just ask like, like,
are you willing to sacrifice in a way that demonstrates a heart of worship?
Can I just ask,
what does your willingness to sacrifice say about your heart of worship?
Because if we're not willing to sacrifice
that maybe we aren't sincere about our worship,
a legacy of faith is connected closely to a heart of worship.
And Mary understood this and because she understood it, we hear
even this day talking about her legacy
and her sacrifice
left a legacy because sacrifice always
leaves a legacy. You know, we talked a bit earlier about the idea, uh,
of leaving a legacy is something of value that is handed down from generation to
generation. And in her case it was this beautiful, costly act of worship.
And that act left a legacy for her. I mean,
here we are thousands of years later, and we're still talking about her story.
We're still talking about her sacrifice.
Her story has been passed down through children and grandchildren and nieces and
nephews. And she has become known for this sacrifice. Yeah,
it wasn't her motivation to make her known,
it was just her desire to be faithful.
That left a legacy that we're all still talking about.
And she didn't know it. But that act of worship,
it was a gift not just to Jesus
but to us.
8: Because.
7: In it, this beautiful story is told.
And it's a story that's been told for generations to come.
And I think if we were honest, we all,
we all wanna live in a way that the story of our faithfulness is told for
generations to come.
We all wanna live in a way that God gets the most glory from how we live our
lives. You know, I love how Jesus says it in verse nine. He he says,
truly I tell you that we, wherever the gospels preached throughout the world,
what she has done will also be told
in memory of her, her sacrifice, her gift,
uh, this moment, this is an example
of sacrificial living. You see, she knows
the sacrifice and worship
will let Jesus know what she really thinks of him.
And I would submit
and our sacrifice what we're willing to sacrifice. And our worship
will also let Jesus know what we really think of him.
Whether we believe that he is who he says he is.
Because the only rightful response to a loving God
is a life of worship. You know,
how does this look practically? Well,
there's a couple of areas that I believe that this kind of shows up in.
And so I wanna leave you with some practical opportunities to practice a life of
worship and a life of sacrifice. And, and I believe that if we were willing to,
to, to live this way,
that it would leave a legacy and not a legacy that points to our name as a
church or us as individuals,
but a legacy that points to the faithfulness of following Jesus Christ.
And the first one is, I believe that we need to make a sacrifice of service.
You know,
one of the hardest things for me as a pastor is to know that we have people who
have been gifted by God, who are not willing to sacrifice and serve.
Because serving not just changes you, it changes everybody around you.
You know, oftentimes I hear like I wanna serve,
but I got so many other things to do, can I just share?
Serving,
serving is this beautiful thing that when we step into it with our whole
hearts, God changes us from the inside out.
Because for just a moment when we're serving, we get our eyes off of ourselves
and we put it on other people. You know,
in his passage he says that the poor will always be with us.
The truth is,
is that we have so many opportunities to serve inside the walls of our church
buildings at outside of the walls of our churches.
And can I just say the area that I see this the most,
where we need the most help most of the time is with our children. You know,
when I was growing up that same timeframe in the 1980s, uh, Whitney Houston,
the great singer and great theologian sin, I,
I believe that the children are our future. We should teach them well and,
and let them lead the way. I don't know that we've done a great job of either.
And I think a lot of it draws back to just our hearts
to serve and prepare the next generation to follow Jesus.
There are so many environments
where we can sacrifice through service.
And if you aren't already serving somewhere, I want to encourage you,
take a step of faith.
Begin to commit to a sacrifice of service. Uh, lemme give you another one. Uh,
it's our sacrifice of time.
And our sacrifice of time is the one that we tend to want to not part with the
most. Let me ask,
does the way that you spend your time right now demonstrate a life of sacrifice,
a life of worship, a life that will leave a legacy of faith? Because it isn't.
If it doesn't, and maybe we need to examine how we spend our time.
You know, there are a few things on this earth
that will stand the test of time.
And one of them is our faith.
8: Because.
7: It leaves
this place and extends into eternity
and how we spend our time matters. And then the last one
is our sacrifice of worship. You see, Jesus was not just a friend to Mary,
he changed her life. Her sacrifice was this beautiful expression of worship.
It was a moment of thanksgiving for her savior.
And if Jesus has changed our lives in the same way that he has changed Mary's
life, and if you have placed your trust in Jesus,
he has the power to change your life. And if that has been true,
then our rightful response is a life of worship.
And I know it's a sacrifice
and I know the cost us something.
8: But I would ask.
7: Are we willing to pay the cost? Are we willing to pay the cost
and give the sacrifice that leaves a legacy of faith?
She, Mary was my prayer
is that we will too. You know,
one of the things that is wonderful about being a part of Hope Community Church
is because, uh,
we aren't just one church out here sacrificing
alone. Uh, God has made us a part of his body and we,
we are a huge part of this kingdom of God.
And it's not just one Little Sea Church Hope Community Church.
And we are a part of the Bigger Sea Church and we get to
participate in this idea of living by faith and watching God move in ways that
we could never imagine.