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14:1 It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, 2 for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”
3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,1 as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. 4 There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii2 and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. 9 And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.
[1] 14:3
[2] 14:5
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
So before we open our scripture passage this evening, I wanted to make just one more quick announcement. It feels like it was about 6 months ago, but I think it was like 5 weeks ago. We asked you to be praying for us as our elders went on a retreat to go away, and kinda pray for a morning and an afternoon and reflect on, you know, where God might be leading us as a church. And so we wanted to say first just thank you so much to those of you who prayed, and a number of you texted us the week before, the week after just to say, hey. We're praying for you.
Joseph Rhea:Trust that God is gonna lead you guys. It was an incredible time for us of just reflecting on God's goodness, kind of deepening our relationships with one another. And while we don't have a an an option or a path forward that we're finally ready to announce yet, we do feel like God has presented us with a possible direction specifically for our facility need, which doesn't feel as urgent here in the 4 o'clock. But if you come to a morning service, you feel it real big. That, we have a definite need for some kind of new option for our facility that we're praying for.
Joseph Rhea:And, again, we feel like we have something that hopefully we'll be able to say more about here in the coming weeks or months. But there is something that we can say, and that's just recently we finished paying off the purchase and renovation of our kids building, which puts us at once again debt free as a church. And that's completely thanks to your generosity in a way that you have been moved by God to give to our church, and we're just radically thankful for that. Wanted to celebrate that with you, announce that to you. So the passage that we're in this evening is in Mark chapter 14 verses 1 through 11.
Joseph Rhea:You can turn there in your bibles or you can, find it there in your worship guide. Mark 14 1 through 11. Now read the text for us and then pray for us. It was now 2 days before the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. For they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.
Joseph Rhea:And while he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly. And she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they scolded her.
Joseph Rhea:But Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you and whenever you want you can do good for them, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could.
Joseph Rhea:She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money and he sought an opportunity to betray him. This is the word of the Lord.
Joseph Rhea:Let's pray. God, I pray that you would speak to us as we study your word this evening. As we see what it means to confront the reality of who you are and who you claim to be, I pray, Jesus, that it would drive us to deep devotion to you because of how great and gracious and glorious you are. I pray that you would speak through me that anything that is just my words would fall to the ground, blow away, and be forgotten. Would your would your words remain with us and would they change us?
Joseph Rhea:We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Adoniram Judson was the first known missionary from America to a foreign land. In 18/12, he and his wife of 2 weeks, whose name was Anne, boarded a ship and left for Burma, which is in part of India now, or in Thailand now, where they would spend their lives serving to share the gospel. When Adoniram asked Anne to marry him, she told him that he needed to ask her father first.
Joseph Rhea:And we actually have a record of the letter that he wrote to Anne's father. It's remarkable. And I want to read a portion of that now. So Adoniram wrote, I have not asked whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world. Whether you can consent to her departure and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life.
Joseph Rhea:Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India, to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this? For the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you? For the sake of perishing, oh mortal souls. For the sake of Zion and the glory of God.
Joseph Rhea:See, Adoniram told Anne's father, I'm asking her and I'm asking you for an act of incredible devotion to God. I'm asking you to say goodbye to her. Maybe to never see her again on this side of eternity. To send her into a world of suffering, struggle, and risk is an act of great devotion that he was asking of Anne and of her father. But listen again to the reason for the ask.
Joseph Rhea:It's in the last sentence, which I'll read one more time for us. He says, can you consent to all this? For the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you? For the sake of perishing, oh mortal souls? For the sake of Zion and the glory of God?
Joseph Rhea:See, Adoniram Judson was captivated by a vision of the glory of God. Of the grace of Jesus and of the beauty of God's kingdom. That's what inspired him to to his own great devotion. And that's the vision that he asks Anne's father to adopt as well. To see God's glory, God's grace, and his kingdom as so beautiful, so worthwhile that they're worth risking, even sacrificing all kinds of things from this worldly perspective too.
Joseph Rhea:See, their great devotion was inspired by a great vision. And that's what we're looking at today. We're gonna see how the more clearly we see Jesus, we see the greatness of who he is. It's gonna inspire us to great devotion as well. Not because we're great or because that proves anything on our part, but entirely because we're captivated by how great he is.
Joseph Rhea:And so that's what we'll be looking at today. So we're coming to the end or near the end of the gospel of Mark. And if this were shot as a western, the last couple of weeks would be when storm clouds start rolling in and people start boarding up, you know, their houses and their shops to get ready for the final climactic white hat versus black hat confrontation. See the intensity of this story has been ratcheting higher and higher over the past weeks. Jesus has entered Jerusalem during the preparation for the Passover, which is one of the biggest festivals in Judaism in his day.
Joseph Rhea:Tens of 1,000 if not 100 of 1,000 of extra people had come into the city for this and Jesus had drawn a huge crowd. He was immensely popular. He rode into the city, to incredible fanfare. So crowds lined the streets, to prepare for, his entry shouting, Hosanna. Which means, save us now.
Joseph Rhea:He rode into town on a donkey fulfilling a prophecy of the coming messiah. The day after that, he went to the temple and he violently cleared it out. Shouting that it had been desecrated from a house of prayer into a den of thieves. That triggered a final series of confrontations with leaders from every major major faction within Judaism held in front of huge crowds. And each time all of these leaders come away furious with Jesus.
Joseph Rhea:And then Jesus has this big conversation with his disciples we saw last week where they're admiring the temple. And he says, this whole thing is going to be completely destroyed. And not only that, the world you know is coming to an end. So Jesus has swept into town acting like a king, judging like God himself, and talking like he knows not just a few decades into the future, but how the world itself ends. He's making these huge sweeping claims about himself and about us and the entire world as well.
Joseph Rhea:So in today's passage, we see that Jesus's claims ultimately lay a fork in the road for us. See, if I drive down I 65 South toward the beach, I come to a point where it ends at I 10, and I have to decide am I gonna go east or am I gonna go west? Because I'm out of 65. There's no more road to travel. I have to choose one way or the other.
Joseph Rhea:In the same way, the more time that we spend with Jesus and the more clearly we see him, we're ultimately driven toward one of 2 responses to him. We see one of those responses in verses 1 and 2. Let's read those again. Says it was now 2 days before the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. The chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him.
Joseph Rhea:For they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people. The chief priests and the scribes are the main religious leaders of Israel. Some of Jesus's most aggressive confrontations have been with them, and he's embarrassed them repeatedly in front of massive crowds. Those confrontations bring the scribes and the priests to the decision in verse 1. We have to kill him.
Joseph Rhea:He's simply too dangerous. He's too great a threat to us to let him live. They're afraid of the people, that's why they decide to do this by stealth. They don't want to do it out in the open, but they conclude we have to get rid of him. And then jump down to verses 10 and 11, because we see the same thing happen again.
Joseph Rhea:Says then Judas Iscariot, who is one of the 12, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him. One of Jesus's own disciples, Judas Iscariot, comes to the same conclusion. We don't know what motivates him to finally make this decision.
Joseph Rhea:It may have been greed. It could have been any number of things. But he too comes to such a complete rejection of Jesus that he thinks, this man has to be killed. He's a complete threat and he can't keep existing. On the other hand, this passage tells us of a woman who has the complete opposite response.
Joseph Rhea:They go east, she goes west. We know from John's account of this story that the woman who's not named here is Mary. So the sister of Lazarus and Martha. We're gonna spend more time with Mary's response in a bit so we're gonna unpack that. But right now it's just worth noting that she sacrifices a valuable piece of property to anoint Jesus's head with perfume, which is something that people did for kings and for priests.
Joseph Rhea:So the scribes and the priests and Judas wanna crucify Jesus. She wants to crown him. This is what happens the more clearly we face Jesus's claims about himself and about us. He says he has the authority to judge all people by his standard of right and wrong. He identifies himself with God the father.
Joseph Rhea:He forgives sins against God, which only God has the authority to do. He says not just that he knows how the world ends, but that it ends with him being worshiped, appearing in glory. C s Lewis, he's a scholar who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia books. He lists out several of these huge claims that Jesus makes about himself, And then he writes this, he writes, I'm trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus. I'm ready to accept him as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.
Joseph Rhea:That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon.
Joseph Rhea:Or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come away with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. See what we see in Mark 14, is people finally realizing that their options with Jesus are limited and they're ultimately limited to 2.
Joseph Rhea:We can crucify him as a threat to everything that we hold dear and everything that we think is right and wrong, or we can crown him and acknowledge him as the Lord of the universe. In fact, to the God of the universe made flesh. We're at the end of I 65 here. See, a man who talks and acts like this isn't just a moral teacher, or a podcaster who has some good ideas about emotional health or time management. He's either diabolically insane or evil.
Joseph Rhea:Someone to be put down like a rabid dog or he's the Lord and king of the universe to be worshiped and followed completely. There's no real third option. So if you're here today because you're interested in Jesus or interested in spirituality, we're so glad you're here. I'd love to meet you after the service and love to talk with you about this and help you investigate this further. But I want to prepare you in advance that what you're gonna find the more time you spend with Jesus and the more clearly you see him, is you're gonna find that you come to this fork in the road.
Joseph Rhea:They can't just be a guy with some nice things to season your life. He claims to be the son of God, who has complete authority over you. And he demands your faith and obedience. You don't have to decide right now whether you accept or reject that. But at some point, you will.
Joseph Rhea:And that decision is going to determine your life on this side of things and in eternity. And so if you're still undecided about him or curious about him, keep investigating him. Keep moving forward. But just be prepared for that decision point, that fork in the road to come. And for those of us who consider ourselves close to Jesus, it's worth remembering this fork in the road as life brings us new circumstances.
Joseph Rhea:See, the chief priests and the scribes were very religious. They were very learned. And in some ways, they were morally upright people. Judas was part of Jesus's disciples. He'd been in his inner circle for years living close to him, seeing him, living life with him.
Joseph Rhea:And they still came to a place where they totally rejected him. Along the way in our life with Jesus, we get confronted with hard choices that feel like a new fork in the road. And when we do, we're forced to ask ourselves again, is Jesus really the Lord and God that I said he was a decade ago? Is he really Lord over my dating life? Is he really Lord over my career decisions?
Joseph Rhea:Like we heard from, Melinda Claude Pierre a few weeks ago. Is he really Lord over how I spend my time and my money? And I'll say, not just as a pastor, but just as a Christian, it is so encouraging to see when people grow through those forks in the road with the same answer. That yes, Jesus is still the lord of my life. He's still God and king.
Joseph Rhea:To see a single adult who goes about dating in ways that honor God, instead of just serve themselves. To see married couples go through rough patches which happen to everyone and fight to stay together in their marriage. To see parents who raise their children in the knowledge and the worship of God, instead of just giving into kind of the worldly path of careerism, come what may. To see retirees who don't just coast with their new, free time, but they keep serving God and others. No one does this perfectly, but holding to this path, continuing on this fork in the road, keeps our life oriented around crowning Jesus.
Joseph Rhea:It's sustaining the Christian life and it's so encouraging to see, especially people who are a step ahead or in the same stage of life as you. So we see here first that Jesus puts in a fork in the road. That we can crown him, or we can crucify him. Now let's look more closely at what it looks like to crown him. Let's read verses 3 through 7 again.
Joseph Rhea:And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly. And she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they scolded her.
Joseph Rhea:But Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She's done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.
Joseph Rhea:So Jesus is in Bethany, which is a few miles away from Jerusalem. It's kind of his base camp for the events of this last week before his arrest and crucifixion. So at this point, he, his disciples, and some close friends are being hosted by a man named Simon the leper, who would have been Simon the former leper. He would have been healed by Jesus of his leprosy or he wouldn't have had people in his home. Now at dinners like this, one custom was to, if you could afford it, give your guests like a few drops of perfume for their feet.
Joseph Rhea:See, in that day, people did a lot of walking and a lot of sweating. And when they laid around a table, you could tell, whether someone's feet were smelling clean or not. And so it was courtesy for them, and also nice for everyone else. Because no one wants to smell feet at a dinner party. Some of you, that's the only line from tonight that you're gonna remember.
Joseph Rhea:Something about no one wants to smell feet at a dinner party. I wish it connected more directly to the sermon, but it is what it is. But Mary isn't the host of this party. And she doesn't just give Jesus a few drops of perfume for his feet. It says that she brings out an alabaster flask of ointment made from pure nard.
Joseph Rhea:And Mark adds that it's very costly, as we're gonna see. And she doesn't just tip out a few drops, like you might do a spritz of cologne, which would have been again, like normal polite courtesy. She breaks it open, so she can spend the whole thing over Jesus. And she doesn't just anoint his feet, she anoints his head. This is a ridiculously lavish act.
Joseph Rhea:It's lavish, first, because it's completely spending something you're supposed to save. So in verse 4, we can see that people recognize that. They say, why is she wasting this? So they recognize from a worldly perspective, this is an act of waste that she gives to Jesus in this moment. Perfume is supposed to be spent drop by drop.
Joseph Rhea:She's blowing the whole thing. It's a lavish second, because it's so expensive. Mark said, it's very costly. And in verse 5, some people, and we know from John's account that Judas is kind of the lead person saying this. They say, this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor.
Joseph Rhea:300 denarii are about a year's wages for an average worker in that day. Mary spends it all right then at once. It's worth just thinking for a moment about how much you make in a year. Won't ask for show of hands for any numbers. Now imagine owning a possession worth that amount of money or being able to write a check for that amount.
Joseph Rhea:That's what Mary just gives away here. Just completely spends on Jesus in this moment. And it's a lavish third, because Mary doesn't just clean Jesus feet, she anoints his head. In the old testament, kings and priests were anointed with oil as a way of consecrating them or marking them out for special honor. There's a book called the song of songs, which is this kind of long poem, almost a play, it's the way it's written about romantic love that's also been written read as an allegory of our relationship with God.
Joseph Rhea:And it has this line from the bride in the song. It's in chapter 1 verse 12, and says, while the king was on his couch, my nard, my perfume, gave forth its fragrance. And so this event is a callback to that. The king on his couch in a room filled with perfume. Mary is giving up this valuable thing to honor Jesus like he's a king.
Joseph Rhea:She's completely handing it over to crown him. What we're seeing here is Mary making a sacrifice. The old testament had a system of sacrifices where people would offer their possessions. They were an agricultural society and so that was almost always livestock or produce and things like that. But they would offer them to God.
Joseph Rhea:Some would be distributed to those in need. Some would have been burned as a payment for the people's sin. And some was just given up as a declaration of trust in God. A sacrifice gives up part of my life to glorify God. That's what Mary is doing here.
Joseph Rhea:She's making a sacrifice, offering a valuable possession that she owns and has control over in worship. 2 weeks ago, we saw a poor widow do the same thing by giving her life savings in the offering box in the temple. These are very similar acts, but there's a key difference. See, 2 weeks ago, we saw the widow offer, what she had, her sacrifice, to God in the temple. Who does Mary offer her sacrifice to?
Joseph Rhea:It's directly to Jesus. So in the same way that we see an offering made to God the father, here in this passage, Mary makes an offering of worship, an offering of glory to crown Jesus. Her sacrifice is an example of the devotion that arises when we see Jesus clearly and choose to worship him, instead of reject him. If we come to the fork in the road that Jesus lays for us and turn toward him in devotion, this is the direction that our lives are going to take. Increasingly, we're gonna recognize that he is the most worthwhile, the most beautiful thing in the entire universe.
Joseph Rhea:That his kingdom is what we and the world need most. And we're gonna be moved to commit our resources, our finances, our time, our attention, our relationships to him, instead of to ourselves or to some other God. It doesn't necessarily mean impoverishing ourselves, but it means devoting ourselves to him in ways that others might find wasteful. So if we go back to that letter that Ad and Iraam Judson wrote at the beginning of our time together, from a worldly perspective, it was a waste. He was asking, his, you know, wife to be his father to give her away to this risky existence serving people that they didn't know and had no natural relation to way across the world and risking not just distance from them, but an early death.
Joseph Rhea:It's investing in something totally different from worldly happiness and success. Now, that can look like giant acts, like what we see from Mary here or from Adonai Ram Judson. But many of you here in our congregation do similar things to this on a different scale every week. We have dozens and dozens of men and women who give nights out of their week to host home groups and build relationships with people that they're not related to, they may not necessarily click as like the most natural friends with, but they're investing their lives in in hospitality and service and building community. Same thing happens with, college and youth students.
Joseph Rhea:We have, I think I heard we had 80 odd small groups of college students that are all led by volunteers and most led by volunteers here at Redeemer. People give hours and hours to serve within our city. People with jobs, kids, kids sports, all kinds of other things that they could spend their time on give portions of their time and their energy to hosting, serving, and loving people they they're not related to who give them no direct benefit. But those sacrifices create the incredible community community we have here at Redeemer and they foster all kinds of life transformation for the sake of God's kingdom. People coming to faith, marriages healed, families restored, lives changed because of these acts of devotion.
Joseph Rhea:I say that not for you to pat yourselves on the back, but just to say that we see what we do what you do and we recognize that for the devotion it is. And we're thankful to God, for what he's doing here with those sacrifices. Now before we move on to our final point, I want us to look for a moment at the exchange that's there in verses 5 through 7 that we read. Because, I've heard that get misinterpreted sometimes even by kind of, major figures. See, some people see Mary's sacrifice and they say, why wasn't that sold and given to the poor?
Joseph Rhea:They rebuke her. And Jesus corrects them. He says, no. She's done a beautiful thing. The poor you'll always have with you, but you won't always have me.
Joseph Rhea:So that's what happens and some people have misinterpreted that to say that this is Jesus somehow putting giving to the poor underneath some kind of spiritual giving. That there's giving to the church and giving to missions or something like that, and then giving to the poor is like, well if you feel like it, you can do it underneath it. But in That's not at all what Jesus means by this. In Matthew 25, Jesus actually says that what you give to the poor is given to me, to him. And so And the book of Acts shows the same kind of thing that people express their dedication to God by giving to those in need.
Joseph Rhea:And so it's not a hierarchy of spiritual giving and giving to the poor, they're 1 in the same thing as far as Jesus is concerned. So giving to the poor is giving to Jesus. So with that out of the way, I could stop here and I could ask, what you need to sacrifice to God? What do you need to give to him, his kingdom, or those in need? I could lay on some subtle guilt, or I could imply that this is what real and true Christians do.
Joseph Rhea:They look within themselves and find the costliest thing they can give, and they sacrifice that to show their devotion to God. And I'm not saying that's not a question worth asking of is there something that I might need or could offer to God? But asking it that way would make us look at ourselves and ask, what can I give to prove I really love God Or I really belong to him? But instead, I want to still get a better question. That's not the right question to ask.
Joseph Rhea:Instead, I want us to ask, what motivates Mary to make this sacrifice? If this is something that is a real sacrifice, a real act of devotion, what makes her do it? Because as we see in the text, she does this not because she's looking at herself and asking, What could I give up to impress God? She's looking at something else. Let's start again in verse 6 and read through verse 9.
Joseph Rhea:But Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She's done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you and whenever you want, you can do good for them, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could.
Joseph Rhea:She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. See, Jesus calls her sacrifice a beautiful thing And then he says, what that beautiful thing is. Says, she's anointed my body beforehand for burial. In the beginning of our sermon, we talked about how the storm clouds are gathering around Jesus.
Joseph Rhea:And the sense of intensity of an impending confrontation is ramping up. Right after this story in the gospel, Jesus has the Passover, his last meal with his disciples. There he says, my body is about to be broken for you and my blood is about to be shed for you. Right from there, he's gonna go to the Garden of Gethsemane and pray where he'll be arrested and ultimately crucified. So this dinner we see tonight is the beginning of the end of the story.
Joseph Rhea:And we don't know how much Mary knows about this, but we do know a few things. We know that Jesus has been telling his followers that he's coming to Jerusalem to be crucified. And Mary has spent her time listening carefully to Jesus. It seems like she's gotten him more clearly than others have along the way. We know that he's been saying things like, the son of man came to give his life as a ransom for many.
Joseph Rhea:And we know that Mary, not that long ago, saw Jesus restore her brother Lazarus to life 3 days after he died. So Mary doesn't make this sacrifice because she's looking at herself. She's making the sacrifice because she's looking at Jesus. She's seeing this man who talks and acts with the authority of God himself, and somehow recognizing that he's about to give his life up for hers. Mary's sacrifice is a recognition of the unfathomably greater sacrifice that Jesus is about to make for her.
Joseph Rhea:That's why he says in verse 9, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. She sees something of the glory and the grace of Jesus that's told now in the gospel. And that glory and that grace move her to make this sacrifice. See, that's true because Jesus has also faced a fork in the road over and over again in his life. See, he was God the son, and he became a human being, which he didn't have to do.
Joseph Rhea:He humbled himself immensely to become simultaneously while being God, also a human being subject to hunger and thirst and loneliness and sadness and frustration and tiredness and all the other things that we deal with. He was in a completely perfect relationship with the father in the glory of heaven, had no sin and he gave that up to live here among us. And and even on earth, he didn't have to die. He could have stayed here and built a kingdom of incredible earthly glory because he kept living a completely perfect life here. Even as far along as the Garden of Gethsemane, right before he was arrested, Jesus prayed, father, if you could take this cup, this path that I'm about to go down away from me, but not my will, but yours be done.
Joseph Rhea:So he says, even now, there's part of me that would rather not go down this road of obedience unto crucifixion and death, but God, it's your will. It's for your kingdom and your glory and so I'm going to follow it. See, Jesus chose not to serve himself, not to rescue himself, but to give himself up for sinners like us. Sinners like Mary. He chose suffering, rejection by his heavenly father, and death, so that we could be forgiven of our sins and raised from the dead like he is raised from the dead after he dies.
Joseph Rhea:So that we could be brought into the story of the gospel as men and women who have been forgiven of so much sin and reconciled to the most glorious, the most beautiful savior in the universe. See, Adoniram Judson didn't ask Anne's father to let her go, so that Adoniram's name could be made great. He asked her father to consider the greatness and the grace of God, whatever that might cost. Mary's sacrifice here is an example for us, but it's not an example to look at ourselves and ask how much we can sacrifice in turn. How much we can give up.
Joseph Rhea:It's an example for us to look at Jesus. To see the glory of this man who is also God, and to see the perfect, sinless God man sacrificing his life for sinful men and women like us. And when we do that, when our eyes are filled with the glory and the grace of Jesus, then we'll see where our possessions really belong. We'll see what our time and our attention and our energy really are for. And we'll be led to offer them freely as God's spirit guides us.
Joseph Rhea:Whether that be to the church or to God's glory in the world through missions or to serve and elevate the poor. It will lead to a life of sacrifice, not for our own glory, but out of gratitude and awe for the glory of God who has let us belong to his savior who has sacrificed so much for us. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the image of great sacrifice and great devotion that we have here in Mary. But we thank you more for the devotion that, her sacrifice points toward.
Joseph Rhea:That you, God's anointed king, also were buried for our sin so we could be forgiven and reconciled to you. I pray that that would fill us and would move us to wanna live for that glory and that grace. Whatever that might mean for us. Lives of gratitude, lives of service, lives of care for others and care for the poor for the sake of your kingdom. I pray that the end result of that would be more and more people who see your greatness and your grace and your glory and worship you.
Joseph Rhea:We pray this in your name. Amen.