John 11:45-12:11 – The Gospel of John

Welcome to City Church Dublin Sermon Archives.

Join us this week as we continue to work through the Book of John in our series The Gospel of John.

My name's Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church.

It's very uh great to have you with us, particularly if you're visiting.

We're in John 11.

Um, and we're finishing off.

We're actually gonna wrap up our John series uh next week.

We're gonna finish chapter 12 because the the whole Gospel of John breaks it at chapter 12, and we'll come back to it in the uh in the autumn.

And so we're in our penultimate week, actually.

But uh some things have you noticed uh some things sometimes have no value uh but you love them greatly.

So this uh ring, this is my wedding ring.

It's not the not the one ring, don't worry.

Uh this is my wedding ring, and uh it is not very expensive.

When we were getting married, I I basically asked for the for the cheapest ring in the shop, in part because I knew that Phil's was going to be more expensive and we had a limited budget, but I asked for the cheapest ring in the shop because I wanted all of the value of this ring to come from what it meant to me.

So it's a cheap thing, it's only about 70 pounds sterling.

Titanium, it's all a bit kind of battered and bruised again.

I wanted it to get tarnished.

Um, because I wanted everybody to know how hard my life was.

Um she's on City Kids today.

Um no, she'll listen to this tomorrow.

Um, but it is of no real intrinsic value.

At other times, there are things that are hugely valuable that people don't really regard or esteem.

There's a story in uh in 2019 of this uh of this French lady in this old French farmhouse that above her cooker uh she had this uh painting uh called uh Christ is mocked, because that's what you want to have in your kitchen.

Uh, but she had this over her French farmhouse range.

And it turned out uh that it was um by an old Italian master whose name I'm gonna uh butcher.

It means bull's head, but it's Chimabuya.

Uh and it sold at auction in Sotherby's for 26 million.

This immensely valuable thing that had just hung in this French kitchen for such a long time.

How much we value something is often expressed in our love for it.

The lady didn't value the masterpiece very highly, and I'm very sentimentally attached to my wedding ring.

I'd be pretty gutted if I've lost it, and I've come close a few times.

You would think that in an ideal world, the value of something and our love for it would correspond.

But often that's not the case.

Often our hearts love things that they shouldn't, that are not worthy of our affections.

Or conversely, we fail to love things that we should, that are immensely valuable, that are worthy, and our hearts are cold to them.

The human heart kind of has a love disorder.

It doesn't love in a corresponding to values way.

We love the things that we shouldn't, and we don't love the things that we should.

What we have expressed in this passage are expressions of love that expose what the people really value.

And at the center of the action here is Mary, a disciple of Jesus.

She sees his worth and her heart, her affections, her love responds in a correspondingly beautiful way.

Her perception of Jesus' worthiness and her love for him are on parallel tracks.

And that's a model for us of Christian discipleship.

But let's start just before that and think a little bit about the religious leaders, about the Pharisees.

What is it that the Pharisees value?

Have a look with me down at verse 45.

Many of the Jews, this is picking up after the raising of Lazarus.

Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and seen what he did believed in him.

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told him what Jesus had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered at the council and said to them, What are we going to do?

For this man performs many signs.

If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

Our place is their position, their position of authority.

And that betrays what it is that the Pharisees actually value.

What do the Pharisees value?

They value power, they value position, they value authority.

And just by the by, one of the things that this shows us is you can be a really religious person and not value Jesus.

You realize that?

That you can be very overtly religious and not really esteem Jesus at all.

Their response to this threat to their power.

You know, Rome will come in and crack down, that's what they think.

Rome uh had a special dispensation for the Jews, uh, but they really didn't like people disturbing the spirit the peace, and so they tend to quash uh uprisings quite aggressively.

And so their response comes in verses 49 to 50.

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year, said to them, Do you know nothing at all?

Nor do you understand that it is better for one man to die, that one man should die for the people, than that a whole nation should perish?

What's his plan?

Let's kill Jesus and save the nation.

What level you might say?

Well, look, I mean, Caiaphas is a Caiaphas is a humanitarian.

He's being pragmatic.

There are realities on the ground, there's a realpolitik to the whole situation.

And yet everything that we've read up until this point in John's Gospel tells a different story.

That what we know from the Pharisees, what we know from the religious leaders, is that they are captivated by what other people think of them.

They long for the glory that comes from others.

They are swayed and persuaded by the opinions of the cried.

They want the power and position.

This needs sober reflection for us all.

Because what is it that motivated the plot to kill Jesus?

Is it humanitarianism?

No.

What motivated the plot to kill Jesus here was a love of the opinion of others.

What motivated the plot to kill Jesus was fear of man.

Something that we all do battle with.

A desire for influence, a desire to be accepted, to maintain our position that led them in a murderous direction.

Because Jesus upsets that apple card.

He is the king, he will suffer no rival.

It will lead your heart in a murderous direction to a rejection of him.

If you love and value success and influence, acceptance and the opinion of others above all else, then you will love it at any cost.

I guess one of the questions is does the distorted hearts of the Pharisees who love position and power, does that thwart therefore the plan of God?

The plan to make Jesus the king.

No.

Because we're told that actually Caiaphas was prophesying.

That is, not that he's a super godly guy.

You know, God can speak through a donkey, so he can speak through you.

Um it's not that Caiaphas was somehow super godly and he'd been to a worship service and was feeling all kind of amped up, and so he prophesied.

No, no, no.

He spoke better than he knew because he spoke about an aspect of Jesus' death.

That's what John means when he said that Caiaphas was prophesying.

He was telling us what Jesus' death is like.

He didn't intend it, but he was describing the true nature of Jesus' death, that he would be a substitute, that he would die in the place of, he would die for others.

Who does he die for?

Well, the passage tells us down in uh verse 52, and not only for this nation, but for all who would be gathered into the children of God, who are scattered abroad.

John expands Caiaphas's prophecy and saying, No, Jesus doesn't just die for the Jewish people, like Caiaphas is thinking.

No, no, actually, in the plans and purposes of God, Jesus is going to be a substitute for all who would be called children of God.

Jesus dies for all who recognize that we don't love right, that our love is disordered, that we love the things that we shouldn't, that we don't love the things that we should, should, and we love worthless things more than we love God.

Jesus steps into history and says, Do you know what I'm gonna die for you to change your love disorder and to put your love on the parallel tracks with my value.

So that you value the right thing and you love the right thing.

Don't want to die for that person.

Because we love worthless things more than God, as a result of that, we deserve death.

That's what it means for Jesus to be a substitute.

It's actually we die or he dies, but Jesus steps into our place.

We result, we deserve death.

Why?

Because we have chosen to turn away from life.

We've chosen to turn away from the God who is life.

We have chosen to turn away from the God who is light.

If you turn away from light, what are you turning to?

You're turning to darkness.

If you turn away from life, what are you turning to?

You're turning to death.

And Jesus says, no, no, I'm going to stop you right there.

I'm going to step in.

I'm going to rescue you.

I'm going to be your substitute.

We are those who have not loved God rightly.

In fact, you could put it in the negative and say that we have hated God.

We don't like his claim over us.

And so we have turned from him and deserved death.

But Jesus is our glorious substitute.

That's what we're going to be remembering in just a couple of Fridays' time on Good Friday.

That Jesus dies in our place.

You need to settle that in your mind, you need to settle that in your heart that Jesus doesn't just die as an example.

You think, oh, we look at the cross, the cross is over there, and that's a great example of selfless love, of what it means to be truly altruistic or truly generous right until the very end.

And the cross is that, but the cross is more than that.

Jesus dies for us in our place.

And Jesus dies not for the person who loved him the most.

No, Jesus dies for the people who love him the least, that he might transform their hearts and align their hearts with his worthiness.

And that is what we see in Mary.

The darkness has begun to close in.

We read in the concluding verses of chapter 11 that Jesus can't go about openly.

And then at the start of verse 12, we read, it's six days before the Passover.

Guys, six days left in Jesus' life.

This is the Passover where he will be killed.

We're T minus six days, T minus until that hour that Jesus has been leading up to.

That's why the book breaks here at the end of chapter 12, because from the start of chapter 13, we slow right down, and we're in the night before Jesus' death, and then in his crucifixion.

But the darkness is closing in, the cross is beginning to loom larger and larger.

And yet, in the center of that deepening darkness, picture it in your mind's eye, in the center of that deepening darkness, there's a table.

And at that table, there is a pillar of light, and it's Mary and her devotion.

Not Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary the disciple of Jesus, and her devotion to him.

There's a meal, and there is an act of love, an act of worship.

And I think John closes in the darkness because against the backdrop of the darkness, the light of what she does shines all the brighter.

Mark in his account doesn't name Mary, but says a beautiful thing that everywhere the gospel is told, we should remember what she did that night.

He's doing a beautiful thing for him.

What does Mary value?

She values her Lord.

She values Jesus.

She sees him as precious, as worthy, as supremely valuable.

Why does she feel like this?

Well, in the immediate context, it's because she's got her brother back.

She's pretty overwhelmed by that.

Her brother was uh beginning to decompose just a few days ago, and now he's reclining at table with Jesus.

How overwhelmingly glorious is that to have what a family member restored to you.

Wouldn't you love Jesus and want to express gratitude and joy towards him?

But it's more than that.

It's that she's begun to understand a little bit of what Jesus said to her as he went to the tomb.

He said, I am the resurrection and the life.

Not just I will bring about resurrection and life.

It is me.

I have resurrection and life in myself.

She begins to glimpse that and she's beginning to see what that means.

And it is welling up in her joy and adoration and devotion.

If your spiritual life is cold, let me give you a top tip in parentheses.

Your spiritual life is cold.

When you pray, stop asking for stuff.

When you pray, stop asking for stuff and start thanking God for stuff.

The embers in your heart will be flamed by adoration.

She adores her Lord and it fuels her discipleship.

God, of course, wants you to come and bring your supplications and requests.

But I find this in myself as well.

How often do I just come to God with the, please God, can you help me today with this thing?

And please, God, could you fix this relationship?

Or please God, could you provide for me here?

God wants to hear those prayers.

He wants us to kind of be persistent and knock at that door.

But one of the things that will thrill your heart and stir your affections for Jesus is as you reflect and meditate on who he is and what he has done and simply adore him.

You want uh help to do that?

Pick up a little book uh of prayers called The Valley of Vision, uh, written a few hundred years ago, and they will do your soul good.

Parentheses over.

Let's get back in here.

She sees that Jesus is resurrection and life, and there's an irony here.

You know, the Pharisees in vain want to try and kill the resurrection.

You know, Jesus is a bit like the T1000, you know, he just doesn't, you know, it doesn't work like that, right?

From from terminated, they're trying to kill the one who is life.

Whereas G whereas Mary comes and embraces him.

How does she express her affection?

Well, we're told with this jar of nard.

Yeah, everybody got nard at home.

No, probably not.

Uh, nard is from a particular flower that grows in the Himalayas.

How did it get all the way from Himalayas to here?

Isn't that quite cool?

Um, but this jar of perfume that would have been an heirloom, maybe passed from generation to generation, it's worth a year's wages.

So what?

I'm not gonna presume what you I imagine that let's take an average, what, 40, 42,000 euro?

Some of you are like, huh.

Great.

Let's get me some nard.

Whatever.

Very expensive.

And what does she do?

She pours it over Jesus' feet and wipes it with her hair.

I mean, just imagine for a second the fragrance of that, the fragrance of her love for Jesus just filling the nostrils of everybody at the table, everybody in the in the house.

And maybe people are walking by and are like, what is that?

You know, like walking past like an Abercrombie and fitch.

She's like, it's like, oh, it's that that sort of it's filling the nostrils.

Why is that happening?

Because somebody loves Jesus.

If you're adoring Jesus, the fragrance that will come out of your life will be smelt by others.

Fills everyone around her.

And just notice every time Mary is mentioned in John's Gospel, she's mentioned in connection with Jesus' feet.

She's mentioned three times, and every time in connection with his feet.

Folks, that's where devotion and service begins for us as Christians.

If you're seeking in your heart to walk up to Jesus as an equal and look him in the eye, shake his hand and say, I'll partner with you.

It's not what Jesus is looking for.

It's not enough.

Mary begins at Jesus' feet.

That's where Christian service begins.

At the feet of Jesus.

And he raises us up.

He blesses us.

But we don't come into Jesus' presence as an equal and shake his hand.

We fall down at his feet and find blessing and love and life as he raises us up.

Mary's affections are aligned with what is truly valuable.

It is a beautiful thing when a Christian's actions matches the worth of Jesus.

But John doesn't want us to forget the darkness, the darkness that is surrounding us, and indeed the darkness is lying there at the table.

We turn then to Judas, and Judas complains.

Verse 4, but Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, he who was about to portray him, said, Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denaria and given to the poor?

Again, another humanitarian.

Like Caiaphas.

Just wasting it, pouring it over Jesus' feet.

Is that what he loves?

No, John tells us his heart.

Verse 6, he said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief.

Having been in charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put in it.

He was the treasurer of the company and he was dipping in and just taking a little bit for himself.

Why?

Because he loved money.

When Dante Alighieri writes his Inferno, he has Judas at the at the lowest point in hell.

Why?

Because he betrays Jesus for money.

The Renaissance writer saw Avarice as the worst of the sins.

But look, there's a note of caution here.

And the other caution is this that you can look and sound virtuous and use it as a cover to hide a wicked heart.

You can sound and say good things like, let's help the poor.

And actually, it's a cover for a lack of devotion and a lack of adoration.

Come back to that in a moment.

Jesus defends her.

He steps in and tells them to leave her alone.

Why?

Why does Jesus defend Mary here?

Why does he say, oh yeah, well, you know, let's uh let's stop pouring, let's sell the rest.

No, just leave her alone.

Why?

Judas thinks that what Mary is doing is a waste.

That she is wasting her devotion and her service.

Jesus says, No.

No act of devotion or service to me is a waste.

No act of devotion or service to me will be wasted because he looks forward to his burial.

Folks, it's been a hard couple of weeks here.

Setting up, tearing down, things not working quite right with the cinema.

You notice the escalators aren't working, the shutters aren't up.

Things haven't been great.

Premier kind of threw us for a loop last Sunday.

Let me tell all of you who serve with us, all of you, and perhaps particularly and especially all of you team leaders, all of you deacons with us, let me say this.

No act of service to Jesus is wasted.

None of it.

He sees it all.

He loves it all.

You leave on a Sunday and you're deflated because the team didn't work quite right and people pulled out at the last minute, and you're just strung out at the end of yourself.

Remember, your devotion to Jesus is seen and it is not wasted.

Jesus defends her also because, like Caiaphas, she is kind of acting better than she knows.

She did this because Jesus was precious to her and she wanted to express it.

But then Jesus tells her and them to that something in the future is about to happen, to remember this when he's dead, when he's buried.

In effect, he's saying to Mary, I know that I'm precious to you now.

But Mary, I tell you what, I'm still going to be precious to you when I'm gone.

And that's such good news for us because we don't have the physical presence of Jesus here with us.

He is absent from us, present in heaven, ruling and reigning and blessing and sending his spirit in our midst.

But we don't see him.

But what he is saying to Mary, he says to us, he says, I can be precious to you even when I'm not with you.

Even on the day of my burial.

Why?

Because Mary's love is aligned with Jesus' worth, and by his spirit, he aligns our love with his worth.

He then turns to the issue of the poor, and this this verse has been mangled by people to be like, oh well, then we shouldn't do anything to end poverty, because you know the poor are just always going to be here.

Well, that's maybe proving too much there.

It's maybe pushing it a little bit far.

He's not saying that we shouldn't give to the poor.

He's not saying that we shouldn't help the needy.

But what he is saying is be careful that it's not just an excuse to hide your heart.

On the surface, Jesus is primarily, or sorry, Judas, you don't want to get those two mixed up.

On the surface, Judas is primarily concerned for temporal relief.

But Mary is pointing beyond the temporal.

Mary is pointing to the eternal realities of Jesus' life of ministry, which Jesus himself affirms when he talks about his burial.

Here's the thing, guys.

Poverty is a dreadful thing.

And we should work as Christians to help to alleviate it where we see it.

We should feed the hungry.

We should clothe the naked.

We should bring the love of God to the fatherless and the widow and to the stranger in our midst.

Poverty is a dreadful thing.

But meeting God as judge on the last day is worse.

It is true that self-righteous, pious people can snuff out genuine care for the needy.

But it is also true that a fervent desire for social action can cover up a lack of worship and adoration.

And if Ben were here, he's sick in bed right now, but he's probably lifting.

Hi Ben, if you're listening to us.

There he is.

I like to do it.

It's not that, it's not that, it's this.

And that's right for us.

It's not just preach the gospel, just tell people about Jesus.

And it's not, let's just clothe the needy, let's just help the poor.

Let, you know, uh the Francis of Assisi thing of, you know, preach the gospel, use words if you have to.

That's nonsense.

There's a place in the middle.

Where because of our worship and our adoration and our esteeming of Jesus, we help the poor and we clothe the needy.

And we seek to bless the alien and the stranger in our midst.

Let me close with some reflections.

Both the Pharisees and Mary point us to the worth of Jesus.

The Pharisees bring out that Jesus must be a substitute.

And John's been preparing us for that sort of idea right since chapter one, when John uh the baptizer saw Jesus coming and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who does what?

Who takes away the sin of the world.

That Lamb who stands in the place of the sins of the people of the world.

What grace, what love, what forgiveness, what glorious redemption we have in him, our substitute.

And the Pharisees, even in their darkness, even in their wickedness, even in their ignorance, point us again to that glorious truth of the worth of Jesus as our glorious substitute.

And Mary, as well, in a sense, has that has that theological truth planted in her heart, sees that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, sees that Jesus is beautiful and compelling and glorious and good.

And so acts out of that heart.

Folks, at City Church, I think, speaking generally, at City Church, I think that few of us need to learn more.

But all of us need to feel more.

All of us need to pray that God would stir our affections of worship and adoration.

So that we might take the stuff that is well, that God might take the stuff that is in our head, and like the broken vending machines that we are clunk that down into our hearts.

And so I would invite you to meditate on who God is, to pray that your affections would align with the worth of Jesus.

But folks, don't just pray.

Act.

Did Mary love Jesus before she got the nard?

Yes.

Do you think that she loved Jesus more after the act of devotion?

I think so.

I think yes.

Do you think that her affections were stirred more or less after she acted?

More.

There is something in the act of devotion that fuels more love for Jesus, that fuels more worship.

It's like the fragrance filling your nostrils.

It becomes more multisensory.

If you have an ember or embers of love and desire for Jesus, and they are flickering in your heart.

In addition to adoring and meditating on who God is, one of the ways that you can fan those embers and get them burning red hot is by actually serving him.

It's by actually carrying out acts of devotion because of his worth.

Expressing your devotion and value of Jesus in your generosity and how you use your time and how you use your money.

If you're part of us here and you've been coming for weeks and weeks and weeks, and you don't give anything, I'll say, look, it's not about one level, it's not about the money.

But it is very much about your heart.

The last thing of a person to get converted is their wallet.

Jesus' worth should be expressed by us in our generosity.

As we as city church seek to show the love of Christ to people here in our city, across our island, you give to us as an act of devotion, you become a member, you get to see where all of that goes.

You get to see all of the ways in which we are blessing others.

That we're supporting church planting in Galway and across the world, that we are seeking to be a blessing to people.

We also need you to serve.

Remember, no act of unseen devotion is wasted.

We need you to join us and participate with us because actually it will be good for you to do that.

It is part of our discipleship.

We're not we are in a cinema, but we're not a cinema.

Do not come in here and just say, I'm gonna watch the show.

It's not what this is, it's not even that good.

We're family, we're a community.

We work together for the glory of God that other people might smell the fragrance of his worthiness and be compelled and invited into that community.

Another act of devotion that you might consider is go.

Go to the plant.

Join Duncan and Becky, be part of Redeemer Dublin as we send people so that they might be a fragrance of Christ in church time.

Take a risk for the kingdom.

God does not risk does not waste our risky devotion.

Blesses it.

And I think that I can make you a promise.

I think I can make you a promise, not from me, but from God.

I think I can make you a promise from this passage and from what the Bible teaches.

And I think that I can promise you this, and with this I'll finish.

I promise, as your pastor who loves you and who will miss you greatly when I go on my sabbatical, I promise that the more we serve together, the more we are generous and financially backed gospel ministry and see its fruit, the more that we as a community take risks for the kingdom, and we will.

The first 10 were hard fought, they were full of challenges and they were full of blessings.

And I'm not, I'm under no illusions that the next 10 are going to be are are going to be easy.

They won't be.

But we can do it together because God doesn't waste our acts of devotion.

God doesn't waste a cent of what we give to the kingdom.

God doesn't waste a scintilla of love in our hearts.

He will change us and he will fire those embers for us, both individually and as a community.

He will stir our affections for Jesus.

He will make us a people by his Holy Spirit, amongst whom the fragrance of Christ smells beautiful.

To a world in need.

But who needs a heart change that their values and what they love might be aligned with the worth and preciousness of Jesus?

That's what I'm excited for.

That's what I'm inviting you to participate in us with.

Would you pray to that end?

Would you pray and meditate that Jesus would fire and fuel your heart with who he is?

Let's serve together.

Let's be devoted to him together for his glory and our joy.

Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.

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