Lent: Expressions of Redeeming Love | Guest Speaker: Brad O'Kelley

So, you're stuck with me today.

My name is Brad O'Kelly, one of the elders here at Christ the Redeemer.

Love you guys.

Thank you for being here on Spring Break Week, which is why I'm here because everybody else gets to go do fun things, and then I have to agonize over actually trying to teach you the Bible.

So that's what we're going to do today.

We are going to John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

John chapter 12 is where we're going this morning because it's the fifth Sunday of Lent.

John 12 · chapter mention

I'm an old school Southern Baptist.

If you ask any Southern Baptist what they're giving up for Lent, they're going to say, I'm giving up Lent.

Like that's just, we don't know anything about that.

That's just the way it goes.

And so the old school Presbyterians in the room are like, you know, and the Anglicans painted earlier when they heard Baptist and all this stuff.

So it's like, you know, it's just a different world, all right?

We're just, we're just we're all getting to the same place, just different.

Okay.

So uh anyhow, so I I don't really know a whole lot about Lent, but I know that we're following the lectionary passages and all this stuff.

This is the passage that we fell on.

When I first read it, I was like, great.

It's like the easiest passage in the world, you know, we're just gonna talk about it.

We'll be out of here in 10 minutes.

Um, but then you start studying it and you're like, oh boy, we're in trouble.

Like, we're in big trouble, and we're gonna have a good time today.

So let me read to you out of John chapter 12, starting in verse 1.

John 12 · chapter mention

We're gonna go through verse 8, and then we'll get rolling, okay?

John chapter 12 and verse 1.

John 12 · chapter mention

It says, Jesus therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

So they made him a supper there, and Martha was serving, but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with him.

Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, who was intending to betray him, said, Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?

Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief.

And as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.

Therefore Jesus said, Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.

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

Let's pray together this morning.

Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for an opportunity to come together as a church and to worship you and uh to sing praises to you, Father.

We pray this morning that as we open your word, Father, that as we study together, that your word would be a roaring lion.

Father, that you would only allow me to open the cage.

Father, we love you.

And we pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh, I I love this passage.

This when I when I first got into it and thought it was going to be boring, I was completely wrong because I love the passage because there's this, there's all these dynamics happening in this passage of scripture.

There's there's this expression of just incredible love, then there's this interruption of like sin and evil, and then there's a redemption towards the end of it.

And and as you get into that, you kind of start to apply some of that stuff to real life, and I can remember uh being in a stage in life where we're just kind of seeing those very same things play out.

I'm I'm I'm I'm a very, I'm sure you can tell this, but I'm a very expressive person, you know.

I uh Mandy just gets all the expressions of my love, you know, and it's it and I'm sure she just relishes those things.

Um and I can remember when we first got married, we were broke.

And I'm I'm when I say broke, I mean like I had just gotten fired from a church when we got married.

Like, it's okay to laugh at that right now.

Like they were starting like you're bad, you got to go.

Like it was like this is this is not good.

I'd been fired from church when we went on our honeymoon.

When we were coming back from our honeymoon, I was jobless.

So we came back from our honeymoon and I didn't have a job, and like we were broke.

And I can remember like for a long time I got a job and we would get paid every week, and we lived week to week.

I had this house, and Mandy, it was a bachelor pad, and Mandy moved into it after we got married, and her she had this impossible task of trying to actually make it a home.

And and at the end of the week, if we had any kind of money left over, uh, we would go on a date and we would go to Chili's.

Like that was our that was the echelon, you know, like Chili's was the big time.

We weren't I one day I would be the president of the United States and we'd be able to go to Longhorn.

But right now, we're at Chili's, okay?

That was our top notch.

And there was the Target across the street.

We had enough money, we would go split a meal at Chili's, and then we would go to Target and talk about all the stuff at Target we would buy when we got rich, like, and not buy anything and just leave.

And so we'd be in Target.

One day we're walking around Target, and Mandy sees these chairs in the little cheap Target furniture section, you know.

And she goes, Man, if I if I had two of those chairs, I could do this at our house in the space that we have, and I didn't know what to do with it, and I could take these, you know, and it's a whole plan that you don't know anything about.

And so she has this plan for these chairs, and I'm listening to her, you know, say these things, and in my mind, I'm going, I'm gonna buy these chairs for her.

I'm gonna get them.

That's my expression of my love, you know, that's how much I love her.

And I'm like, but I can't do it right now.

I'm gonna come back and get them.

So I come back and buy the chairs and I push them up to the front of the store, and of course, in true Target fashion, what's the first thing they ask you when you get to the line?

Would you like to save 20% today?

And I'm like, I'm broke, I have no money.

I'm about to go into debt buying these chairs, and I'm like, why, yes, Nancy, I'd love to save 20% today, you know.

Please tell me how.

I don't know if you've ever applied for the Target red card, but they do it right there in line.

Like, 50 people behind you, they don't care.

It's like, give us your money.

They do not care.

So you sign up right there.

And I mean, literally, here's the thing.

She goes, Well, let's get you pre-approved.

Let's do that, Nancy, you know?

And she's like, All right.

She stares at me for a minute, and I'm kind of thinking, what's going on?

She's like, Congratulations, you're pre-approved for a thousand dollars.

Apparently, all you have to do is breathe.

You can get a thousand dollars at Target if you can breathe.

And I mean, and then it's like, touch your right index finger to the tip of your nose.

Zero percent for six months.

You know?

And I'm like, well, if I make a lap around the store, can we make it a year?

And then it's like, on second thought, let's not do that, Nancy.

I don't know if I get back over here.

But get 0% for six months.

I buy these chairs, I put it on this card, and I'm like, man, I gotta go home, give the chairs to Mandy.

This is how much I love you, honey.

And I mean, she was just in heaven for 24 seconds.

It was the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

Where then it was like, get out of the way, give me my chairs.

And and I sit down and I see her decorate this section of our house, and I'm like, man, this is beautiful.

I've given this wonderful expression of my love.

She's done such a great job with it.

And then the old friend buyers remorse sets in, right?

And I'm going, what have I done?

And I grab that little pamphlet that they give you, and I open up the pamphlet and I'm reading through it, and it's like$1,000, okay, good.

0% for six months, okay, good.

And then it's like, at which time your APR will go to 27.9%.

And I've never had a stroke that I know of, except for in that moment, I'm pretty sure that's what a stroke would feel like.

And the number just jumped all over me, and I'm like, I we uh I'm freaking out.

How long, how long every week, if we if I pay a certain amount of week per week for six months to pay these off, how much do I have to?

$10.32.

I still remember the number today.

You want to know why?

Because I tacked it everywhere in our house.

Every time Mandy asked for something,$10.32, lady.

That's how much we gotta have today.

Oh, you want to go to Chili's again?

$10.32.

Nope.

Not going today.

We've got to have$10.32 to pay these chairs off.

That expression of my love immediately turned into a complete interruption of my obsession with money.

I ruined the expression of love by turning it into something that it should have never been.

It should have been a gift, right?

It should have been something that was beautiful and a gift and great, but it wasn't because$10 and 32 cents.

I was gonna let it ruin over that little small amount.

And so when I read this passage of scripture and we go into this verse by verse, you have to understand what's happening here.

In verse 1, look at chapter 12, verse 1.

It says, Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, who Jesus had raised from the dead.

Jesus raised him from the dead a passage before this in chapter 11.

So it's one, this is brand new.

This is a new thing.

And Jesus comes back into town and he's sitting with Lazarus, they're reclined at the table.

This is a celebration.

Do you understand?

This is a celebration of what has happened, what Jesus has done for Lazarus and Lazarus' family.

And look at what it says.

It says, So they made him, verse 2, they made him a supper there, and Martha was serving.

We know that Martha is a servant from earlier in the Bible, where Martha and Mary kind of get into it a little bit.

Martha's mad because Mary doesn't help serve.

And Mary's listening to the words of Jesus.

She'd rather be taught than have to serve the meal.

And Martha's going, hey, you need to tell her up, you need to tell her, get up and help me.

And Jesus has to kind of step in and go, No, that's not how this works, you know, like everything's good.

So now this time Martha's serving.

And it says, but Lazarus was one who was reclining at the table with him.

And then in verse 3, look what happens.

Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

And the house was filled with fragrance of the perfume.

This celebration of the life of Lazarus from where Jesus had raised him from the dead, all of a sudden takes on a whole new meaning.

Why?

Because in the midst of it, we get this beautiful sacrifice from Mary.

Mary goes and grabs this bottle of perfume.

The Bible says it's a pound of perfume of pure nard.

I know nard may not sound like it's the most greatest smelling thing in the world to you, but trust me, it's actually pretty good.

Alright?

It's a root from India.

And what would happen is they would have to ship this all the way into Israel.

They would extract the oil out of this root and it would make this beautiful smell.

Apparently, you still buy it today.

I'm sure one of you essential oil people can tell us all about it.

And it's, you know, it's probably in your repertoire somewhere, and you use it for something, I'm sure it'll heal all of us.

But at the end of the day, this nard was transported in.

Mary would have had to pay to have this shipped over to her.

It would have been used only in the most extreme circumstance when almost always would have been in the occasion of death, where you would anoint a body to keep the smell down.

So now here's Mary taking this bottle of costly perfume, and she is anointing the feet of Jesus.

The problem is that Jesus isn't dead.

This isn't a funeral.

This is supposed to be a celebration.

This is a celebration of life.

What Mary's doing is she's sacrificing this, and she does so as a sacrifice of unashamed love.

And I'll prove it to you.

Look, in verse 3, it says Mary took a pound of costly perfume of pure nard, anointed the feet of Jesus.

Watch.

And wiped his feet with her hair.

Now I know that's probably customary for some of you in here where you come home every day and you have a foot washing ceremony, I'm sure.

But in this time right here, here's what's happening.

You have a woman approaching a man, and as she wipes his feet, she's using what?

Her hair.

For a Jewish woman during this time to take her hair down in front of mixed company was an absolute no-no.

That would have never happened.

But Mary, out of an expression of love, has now taken an expensive sacrifice and also completely busted all the social norms of the day and has gone to Jesus and begins to literally wipe his feet with her hair.

The celebration turns into a ceremony of sacrifice and unashamed love.

Right in front of this entire house.

And at the end of verse 3, this is the most beautiful part.

It says the fragrance of the perfume filled the house.

There was no getting away from Mary's sacrifice of unashamed love for Jesus.

The very aroma of it filled the house.

A lot of people think there's a correlation between these two with Paul in Ephesians and in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1 and 2.

Ephesians 5:1

This is what Paul says.

He says, Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love just as Christ also loved you.

Listen to this.

And gave himself up for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God as what?

A fragrant aroma.

Oh, there's a great correlation here that as Mary anoints the feet of Jesus and the smell literally fills the house.

The Bible goes into enough description to tell us the smell of this aroma is filling the house.

What Paul does later on in Ephesians is he said, that very same fragrant aroma that is filling that house is the risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But you see, there's one little problem with these expressions of love.

It never fails.

In the midst of those expressions, there will always be an interruption.

Always be an interruption.

Look at verses four through six.

It says, But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, who was intending to betray him, said, Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and given to poor people?

Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief.

And he had the money box and he used to pilfer what was put into it.

Right in the midst of this beautiful celebration, this beautiful expression of love comes this interruption.

Now I know about interruptions.

I have children, so I know all about interruptions.

I get it.

And my favorite part of every single day, look, take this for what you can call me a bad parent.

It's fine, okay?

Like I've I'll I'll fight you later on that.

Um, my favorite part of the day is that hour and a half at night when the kids go to bed, and you get to watch what you want to watch, you know?

Mandy and I get to just sit and just watch what we want to watch, you know.

We get back in control of the remote control, the kids are asleep, and you think, yeah, but you know about interruptions, so you know the kids coming down the stairs, I need water, I need this, no, no, no.

No, no, no, that's not our interruptions.

That's not our interruptions.

My interruption is Mandy.

And the reason is because at about the time that the television show that you've been waiting for that beautiful hour and a half in the evening, about the time that the show's gonna tell you, the killer is, Mandy's gonna go, did I tell you about so-and-so?

And you had to pause.

You had to pause in the middle of the show.

No, honey, you didn't.

You didn't do that at all the other times that we had for you to do that.

You didn't do it.

You did it now.

When we're revealing the killer.

You know?

And really, in my mind, I'm thinking, how many seconds am I gonna have to rewind this?

You know?

Then the story comes on.

It's there's never a shortage of interruption.

You know, there's never like, and now I've just gotten to the point where as soon as she goes, you know, poop, pause.

Like, I don't even want to know, I don't even, I I don't, and she's like, you didn't have to pause it.

You know.

I know all about interruptions.

I know all about interruptions into the things that you want to do.

Isn't it funny how right about the time that you think you're doing what you want to do, and there will always be an interruption into that, in every single expression of love and sacrifice that we have, you need to be ready because there will be an interruption.

Something will happen to interrupt the moment, and in this circumstance right here, what Judas does is he interrupts this beautiful moment.

Why?

Look at what he says.

It says, one of his disciples, first of all, here's what we know about Judas in verse 4.

Who was intending to what?

Betray him.

John, the author, wants to make sure you know this right here is evil.

He says, remember, this is Judas.

He doesn't just leave it at the first name, doesn't just leave it at the last name.

What does he do?

He says, This is the guy.

This is the one that's going to betray Jesus.

And then he goes even further into it.

It says, What does Judas do in verse 5?

Why was this perfume not sold for 300 dinari and given to the poor people?

Now, doesn't that sound great?

Doesn't that sound great?

Why, hey, 300 dinari, do you know how much that is?

If you go back to the parable of the sowers in the field, do you know what they were paid for a day's wages?

One.

One dinara.

It was the most common coin in the Roman Empire.

That was a day's wages.

This is 300 of them in one bottle that Mary's using.

Judas is going, hey, that's almost a year's worth of money.

Why don't we sell that thing and give it to the poor and on the surface?

Isn't that just a beautiful thing?

Yeah.

I guarantee you didn't get, just in my own assumption, I bet he didn't get a single pushback from any of the disciples to go, no, no, no, no, no.

This needs to happen.

No.

I guarantee you, every single one of them went, yeah.

We've been doing all this stuff for the poor.

Why don't we sell this and give it to the poor?

It's a great question.

Here's the problem with that question is that it is evil veiled in righteousness.

It's evil veiled in righteousness.

We've taken this righteous and good thing, and no matter how much evil you put, no matter how much righteousness you heap on top of that, it doesn't escape the fact that this man was evil.

And that in the very next verse in verse 6 it says, and he said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief.

He was a thief.

And he heaps this righteousness on top of the evil in hope that it's more palatable for the people that are hearing it.

But at the end of the day, no matter how much righteousness you heap on top of evil, it's still evil.

And if you don't believe that, turn on the news.

Because it's not new in this world.

The things that happen are not new.

As a matter of fact, in Isaiah, this is one of the greatest passages of scripture in Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 20.

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

Isaiah the prophet is talking to Judah, and he's looking at Judah, and he's going, You have a problem, and you're going to be overtaken by the Babylonians if you don't straighten it out.

And the whole chapter is nothing but woes to Judah.

And look at what he says in verse 20.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.

Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.

Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant men and mixing strong drink.

Woe who justify the wicked for a bribe and take away the rights of the ones who are in the right.

Don't you understand what's going on?

In the time of Isaiah the prophet talking to Judah, he's saying, You need to be careful because you're replacing righteousness with evil.

Then we get to Judas in this very passage of scripture, and what is he doing?

He's trying to replace righteousness with evil.

And then you get to the very day that we sit in this room, and what does this world constantly throw at us other than evil, veiled in righteousness?

It has not stopped, and it will not stop until it's redeemed.

Because you see, that's the beauty of all of this is that even in the midst of this evil veiled in righteousness, there's a redemption coming.

Look at verse 7.

It says, Therefore Jesus said, Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.

Jesus is not talking about keeping this perfume for the day of his burial.

There are two Marys that show up on Sunday.

You realize he's gonna die the next Friday.

This is on the Sabbath, Saturday.

Jesus is going to die the following Friday.

Okay?

This is the last of the Old Testament Sabbath.

Jesus will die on Friday.

He will be risen on Sunday.

They will gather the church because of the testimony of who?

Two Marys that showed up to anoint his body with what?

Oils and spices.

They will gather the church on Sunday, and that practice will continue all the way till today.

That's why we gather on Sunday.

And so they show up and these two Marys show up.

But guess what?

This Mary is not one of those Marys.

Those are two different Marys.

She's not one of them.

Jesus is not looking at her and going, hey, you need to save that for the day of my burial.

What he's doing is he's looking at the person that is saying these things back to him, which is who?

Judas.

And he looks at Judas and he says, Leave her alone.

Let her keep not the perfume, let her keep this custom of anointing those that are dead.

Why would Jesus want her to keep this custom?

Because there's two people in the room that know when he's going to die.

One is him, and the other is Judas, knowing that that betrayal is coming.

He's looking Judas in the eyes and he's going, I know that you're trying to ruin this moment.

I understand that you're trying to take your evil and veil it in righteousness, but it doesn't affect me because I'm going to redeem the whole thing by telling this woman right here, keep this for the day of my burial, because that custom is coming.

That day is coming when I will die, when I will go to the cross, when I will redeem all of this unto myself because of my blood.

And he looks at her in verse 8 and he says, For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

And in our modern world, we go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That doesn't sound great.

He shouldn't have said that.

No, but you have to understand.

This is a dying man.

This is a dying man.

This is a guy that's going to the cross and knows that he's headed in that direction to redeem all of this.

And he's saying the poor are going to be here.

The poor will have their time from the time that we began this ministry all the way up to the modern day.

The church is going to stand for the poor and help them and do the best that they can.

What Jesus is saying in this instance is he's going, I know where I'm headed because I have a job to do, and that job is redemption.

And Paul writes it beautifully in the book of Titus in chapter 2.

Titus chapter 2, verse 11 through 15.

Titus 2:11–15

This is what Paul says.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us why?

To redeem us from every lawless deed, to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority and let no one disregard you.

This entire scene in John is prepared, doing exactly what Lent is designed to do.

It's preparing our hearts for the fact that we are in preparation of celebrating a risen Lord and Savior.

Why?

Because he came to redeem.

Not only Mary, that person that issues this beautiful sacrifice of love, but do you know who he's able to redeem as well?

Evil.

Why?

Because it's because as a savior, he wishes that no man perish.

But that all have everlasting life.

That redemption, I I I'm I'm blown away by the act of redemption because in this world, our vision can get blurred.

Yesterday I I had, it was kind of a strange day for me, and we're we're ending with this.

We didn't really have anything going on, which is unusual for Saturday for us.

Like nothing, nothing happening, nobody had anywhere to be, all this stuff.

And I get a text on Friday at about five o'clock in the afternoon that that one of our church members there in a situation, son's having emergency surgery, things are things are progressing quickly.

And I get a text message with about 20 people on it that says, hey, if you'd like to show up and pray for these people tomorrow, be here at this time.

And of course, I was like, I'm I'm there, but uh I didn't really put much thought other than I'm there into it.

And we showed up to pray for Brooks Forster and his family's a member of our church, and Doug's here this morning, and we showed up to pray, and when I show up, I'm on a text with 20.

I I need you to understand, I'm on a text with 20 people.

20.

And I show up to Doug's front yard, and there's hundreds.

There's the Marietta Fire Department, the police, there's hundreds.

And they came to do nothing else but to pray.

To pray for a boy that's going to have surgery.

Based off of a text a few hours later, hundreds showed up.

And my very first thought, my the first thought that comes into my head is how much evil gets expressed during the Monday through Fridays that we all have to see and read and be a part of, and you think, man, everything's just gone.

Everything's gone and everything's wrong and everything's upside down and bad, but then you show up to something like that and you realize there's still some redemption left.

There's still some redemption of an Almighty God left just enough to pull a community together and say, no matter what, we're here.

If all we can do is just pray, we'll pray.

That the redemption of an Almighty God is not run dry.

It's still available for you and for me and for all of us.

And that scene yesterday just put back into me a hope and a redemption that God is still at work.

And my prayer for you today, brothers and sisters, is that he's still at work.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer this morning.

Father, we thank you that even in the midst of even in the midst of evil, even in the midst of bad, even in the midst of wrong, you're still at work.

That Lord, when the interruptions come, as we're making sacrifice and interruptions show up, and we we need redemption, Father, that you stand ready to offer that to us.

We thank you, Lord.

That in your grace and your mercy you give that to us on a daily basis.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.