Poured Out

Amen. Well, thank you for appreciation. I feel appreciated. Thanks to Steph for all she did behind the scenes. For that, it's the best job in the world. I'm going to try not to cry, and I'm going to fail. At that, this church, you know, the last year has been a lot of personal suffering for us as a family, a lot of hard things, and this church has been a balm, a sweet spot, a blessing to us in the midst of that. But enough about me. The job of any pastor, a good pastor, is to point people to Jesus, so let's do that. But before we do that, I actually am going to start with a little church family catch-up. We're going to do a little catch-up on a little mini State of the Union, if you will, on what's going on at Hope North Lakes. So these are our shirts from our first birthday party, Disappointingly Normal, and I wanted to just acknowledge if you're new or visiting, or if you've been here a while, you're like, I don't know what that means. No one really does. I'm going to clarify it a little bit. Now, here's the thing about us at Hope North Lakes. We exist to help more people in the north suburbs start and strengthen a relationship with Jesus Christ. The way we want to see that happen is by being a church that is welcoming, authentic, clear about the gospel and how to connect, and then engaging, seeing how Jesus interacts with every part of our lives. So that welcoming authentic clear engaging are the values that we use or try to to uh portray as a church and then from those values came this phrase disappointingly normal what does it mean it means we're not weird, we're not well a little weird some of you um i'm just kidding uh shots fired uh we're not flashy. We're not holier than thou. We will actually disappoint you with how normal we are. Now, here's the thing. Jesus, the gospel, overwhelmingly impressive. He's impressive. And actually, because he's impressive, we get to be disappointingly normal. I did want to explain that. I wanted to celebrate one thing. We launched community groups, our discipleship groups, on September 13th, less than a month ago. We launched with eight groups around the north suburbs and 18 leaders, and we had a goal to see 75% of regularly attending adults of Hope North Lakes jump into one of those groups. And I can announce, I don't actually know how many people regularly attend here, but we have 84 people in community groups as of today. So just give it up for that. That's amazing. Praise God for that. And let's keep that going because that is the main place where we are going to see our relationships with Jesus strengthened. Sunday is but one day of the week, But being with your group throughout the week, knowing people, doing life together, that is a game changer. I want to talk about then two things, two updates we have here. If you haven't noticed it or seen it, the kids of our church exist beyond the lobby. They actually don't just exist in the lobby. But we have an incredible kids' church ministry here that is not glorified babysitting, but is changing lives by teaching kids about Jesus and the beauty of knowing him and being connected to a church. So actually I wanna share over the last eight weeks, we've averaged 37 kids over the four rooms, which is wild. We actually set a record with 41 kids on a Sunday and then broke that record with 45 kids the next Sunday. So we're seeing a growth in our kids ministry and it's incredible and we're so thankful for that. and we've got a great team, but we actually are coming to a little bit of a tipping point there. We need to be able to add another root classroom. So we have our elementary right now is all elementary. They're all together, and it can be a little overwhelming. So we need to break those into two rooms, younger kids and then an older elementary. We're at a tipping point there. We need to be able to expand there. And I've always promised to shoot straight with this church, so I'm going to do that. We are at this tipping point. We need to add more volunteers. We need more people jumping in and serving. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean serving in kids. It could mean serving anywhere that allows us to free up more people to serve in kids. But we do need more people so that we can split those classrooms and open up our Eagles room. And if we can do that, we actually will have very focused discipleship from zero to graduating high school, which would be incredible. That's our last kind of age group to really lock down. So we need more people serving, which leads me to my second tipping point. If you haven't noticed, a very cool thing. There's a bunch of babies on the way at this church. And one of the babies on the way is in Monty and Jamie's family. And Monty leads our worship much of the time. And so we need to, another tipping point is we need more people to step up, particularly in the worship space. And so part of that is praying for God to bring those people because not everyone can play music. Certainly you don't want me up there. I make sure every Sunday that my mic is off before we start singing. But we need more people to step into the worship space. We have room for all kind of musicians, but prayers particularly for another guitar and more ladies. Not that we don't love the boy band. We love the boy band, but to have more female musicians and vocalists would be incredible. Now, real quick, I'm aware the thought of stepping up to serve somewhere might make you uncomfortable or might challenge you or push you. Now, in the kingdom of God, that actually is not a bad thing. God uses our uncomfortability and the things that challenge us or that he calls us into to grow us. And so that can actually be a grounds for growth. And I want you to just think about that we then are a family. That by serving, you're actually saying, hey, I'm committed to doing the dishes on my night of the week, right? Like this is, that's what it looks like to be a healthy church. So I want to encourage you, if there's a next step for you to take at Hope North Lakes, whether it's joining a community group or serving or both, we want to help you take that step. Now, let me pray and ask God for his help in stewarding this church, and then we'll continue on with the service. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we just praise you for what we sang about that Jesus Christ is the living hope of this church, that we actually get to be freed up to be disappointingly normal, and I get to be the most disappointingly normal of them all. And I just thank you for that. I just pray that you would help us steward this moment well in our church, and steward this gospel well and help us to be that Christian gospel family that you've called us to be by your grace and because of your son we pray in his name amen. All right let's get into this bad boy we are in the gospel of mark we are in all the way up to chapter 14 we've been in this sermon series for a long time if you haven't, uh heard a number of the messages in this series and you'd like to catch up we have a hope north lakes sermon podcast you can find online and listen to those um but uh and if you what we do every week we're going to read and unpack the Bible. If you don't have a Bible, the words will be on the screen, but we'd also love for you to take one of the free Bibles on the tables in the back. Those are our gift to you. This would be, maybe if you're coming for the first time, you're having some first impressions. This is Hope Downtown, and this is actually where I started going to church, and I was thinking about first impressions that I and then Allison, my wife, had when we separately went to Hope. So my story, the first Sunday I went to Hope, I was not a Christian at the time, I was an atheist, And I remember the first hymn they played was, Come and Welcome, Sinner Come. And I'd grown up religious in my mind. You're like, you don't welcome sinners. Those are the people you would want to be distanced from. And that's their first thing they sang is, come on in here, sinners. I was like, okay, that's a weird first impression, but it definitely made an impact on me. I still remember it to this day. Allison went to Hope as a Christian much before I did. I actually started going with her, and her first impression of Hope as a Christian was, oh, that's nice. They preach the gospel every week. That's a really good thing that non-Christians get to come in here and hear the gospel every week. They need to hear it. I'm glad they do that. She didn't realize, she says, only later did it hit me, oh, I need the gospel every week. She didn't realize her need for the gospel. Now, what we're going to look at today, we're going to see this amazing story of Mary and then a tragic contrast in Judas. And we're going to realize one of the things that emerges from that is that the gospel, whether you're in here and you say, yes, I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm a Christian, or you're in here and you say, I'm on the fence, or I'm not there, or I actually am opposed to Jesus, the gospel is for Christians and non-Christians alike. And we're going to see that in today's passage. So let's read and unpack this from Mark 14, verses 1 through 11. It says. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, Why was this 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. 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. 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. And our passage concludes, then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, 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. So that's our passage for today. Let's get right back in and start unpacking this and see the implications, not only in what it's teaching, but then for us. So again, 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. For they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people. So here we are, a little context setting for Mark. They're about to all be in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These events from ancient Israel's past that God commanded them to remember and commemorate. And here they say, the chief priests and the scribes, who are these religious leaders who we've seen be confronted and confronting Jesus all throughout Mark, here they are ready to bring their plan to fruition, arrest him by stealth and kill him. They don't want to do it during the feast because there would be an uproar from the people that love Jesus or know of Jesus. So how did it come to this though? How did it get to this point where they are willing to take such drastic action? It's actually been brewing for a while in Mark, a couple different spots where we saw it. In Mark chapter 3, very early on, Jesus heals a man with the withered hand. They're in the synagogue on a Sunday, it's the Sabbath, and he does a work. He heals a man with the withered hand. And look what it says, The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him how to destroy him. So here these religious leaders were willing to compromise their value of staying distant from the Herodians, that's the Romans, in order to destroy Jesus. They're ready all the way in Mark chapter 3 when he heals a man. Jesus, it says, was grieved at their hardness of heart when this happened. And later in Mark chapter 12, he tells a parable to them. He tells a parable about God's people. Now these parables are always confusing who's at the heart of the story. What does it mean? But he tells a parable and says, you are rejecting me, God's son, God's king. And instead of receiving it, they do what he said. So at the end of him telling this parable, look what it says. And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. So throughout Mark, we've got a couple different bumps in the road where the Pharisees, the religious leaders, are showing, we're going to kill this guy. We've got to kill this guy. We've got to take him out. The language of destroy. David Garland, in his commentary, then sets up our context for the passage and for what's coming in the next weeks. He says, each scene in this section, the plotting by the Jewish leaders, the anointing and the betrayal contract, foreshadows Jesus' death. The Jewish leaders, identified by Mark as the chief priests and teachers of the law, are agitated both by Jesus, threatening actions in the temple and the acclamation from the crowd. They begin to make good on their determination to do away with a dangerous rabble-rouser who menaces the temple and their priestly class. Because of his popularity, they plot to arrest him by stealth and to kill him. How did it get to this point? This is high drama here. They are setting up for the week of the passion of the Christ. He's going to go and die, and this is all setting it up. Mark is letting us in on what is going to happen. They're going to arrest him by stealth and kill him. That's the context. And then one act breaks through that tension. Verse 3, and well, he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper. Bethany's two miles outside Jerusalem. He's not there yet. 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. Amazingly, he's in the house of a leper. He wouldn't have been in the home of a leper unless in all likelihood he had actually healed this man. He'd cleansed this man. He'd brought this man back into community. And now he is staying at Simon's house. They're eating a meal and in comes this woman. She approaches, which would have been against custom. When they're eating meals in this culture at the time, women were not allowed to approach men unless they were serving the food or the meal. But instead she comes in, she brings this flask of perfume. Now, what is this perfume? Let's learn a little bit more about it here from James Edwards. He said the nard was probably, very probably a family heirloom, in which case it possessed sentimental value in addition to its monetary value. Mark reports that she did not pour the unguent, but smashed the jar itself, which means the vessel could never be used again, thus symbolizing the totality of the gift. Multiple commentaries mention this would have been worth a year's wages. And this family heirloom, almost like a wealth security blanket, if you will. I was trying to think of a likewise analogy, maybe for those that have emergency funds for your life. If you just took your whole emergency fund and just said, here, Jesus, you take it all. She takes this thing that she could have put security in, could have put trust in. There's profound value to it, and she gives it all to Jesus. She pours it out on him. So then who is she, though? Mark doesn't tell us who she is. We can go to John's gospel, a parallel account of this story, and he tells us, he names names. So here in John 12, verses 1 through 3, six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany. Where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there. This would have been the two days before. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary, therefore, took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Different accounts will say poured on head, poured on feet. One commentary said this is like a pound of liquid here, so this was covering everything and filling the whole room. Now Mark leaves her anonymous, but John is willing to name names. The reason Mark leaves her anonymous is he wants us to contemplate the act of worship and discipleship that she's doing, this devotional moment that she has. But John wants us to understand who she is. This is Mary, the sister of Lazarus, the sister of Martha. Now, we've seen Mary, we see Mary three times in John. And curiously, amazingly, beautifully, she's always at the feet of Jesus. The first time we meet Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus when he's teaching. Her sister Martha is running around serving, and she's just at the feet of Jesus, listening to everything he has to say. The second time we meet Mary is at the gravesite of her brother. Lazarus is dead, and she runs to Jesus and says, if you were here, this wouldn't have happened. And he teaches her about the resurrection the third time we meet Mary is right here, anointing him for his burial. Her actions, though, just a beautiful example of faith, a woman of discipleship and great faith. Her actions get an immediate response. Verse 4 here of Mark, going back to Mark. 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 to denarii and given to the poor and they scolded her what a waste i don't know the last time you've been scolded they scolded her, and mark leaves this this speakers of the indignant people unnamed open-ended but john again he's willing to name names, but judas iscariot john 12 here but judas iscariot who is it judas iscariot one of his disciples he and he goes further he who was about Quote, to betray him said, why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? And John gives us the context, the motive. Mark doesn't give us the motive. John gives us the motive. Why does Judas do what he does? Verse 6. He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. And having charge of the money back, he used to help himself to what was put into it. Judas seemingly had these pious motives. Oh, we could care for the poor with this. What a waste. But really, he just wanted to take. They scold her, as it says. What is Jesus' response going to be to her and her action? Again, and they scolded her. 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. Now, one thing we'll just get out of the way quickly, what Jesus says there in verse 7, he's not arguing against caring for the poor or against any social involvement. There are many books you could look up that highlight Christianity's tradition and history of caring for the poor. You can find that that's central to the gospel, caring for the poor. That's not what he's saying. What is he saying? He's saying, she's done a beautiful thing to me. Why? He's saying the one-time nature of her act This total gift of this worthy and expensive thing, That one-time nature of her act Actually points to the one-time nature of what I'm going to do, Again, look at what it says He goes on, verse 8 She has done what she could, 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. Now, what's happening here? Mary, more than anyone, saw and understood the necessity of Christ's death. She was at his feet listening to his teaching. She watched him raise her brother from the dead. She poured out her ointment on him because she understood, more than anyone, the necessity of Jesus dying. So that's why her response is not pragmatic, but it is perfect. Look what it says. She's done what she could. She offers everything she has to Jesus for his burial. She pours perfume over the same man who called her brother out of the tomb so that Jesus can go into his tomb anointed. This this this moment just broke me this week this act of devotion listen to ken hughes he says what an astounding moment, mary who loved to sit at the feet of jesus unexpectedly approached her reclining lord bearing a priceless alabaster vial of imported indium perfume very likely a family heirloom snapped the narrow neck of the flask poured a generous portion of jesus head anointing him and then poured the rest of the contents on his feet, humbly worshiping, wiping his feet with her hair. It was an intensely fervent expression of devotion, as fervent as found anywhere in sacred scripture. In this faith-filled action, she demonstrates, if my Savior, if my King must die, then he will die knowing he has my entire allegiance, and I will honor him with all that is precious to me. This is a beautiful moment in the Gospels. And it is contrasted by a terrible one. The betrayal contract of Judas Iscariot. Verse 10. Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money, and he sought an opportunity to betray him. Verse 11 just hurts. They heard it, they were glad. They were glad to do evil. It's tragic. And yet it's not as great a tragedy as what Judas does. He betrays his friend. Again, James Edwards says, Despite its economy, Mark's account's shortness, Mark's account implies that Judas was fully responsible for his betrayal of Jesus. It is he who goes to the chief priest, not they to him, and in one of the bitterest lines of the gospel, his treachery causes them joy. He continues, Judas is thus not a victim of circumstances or a pawn dominated by greater forces. He is a sovereign moral agent who freely chooses evil in handing Jesus over. This is the ugliness of sin. Judas freely chooses to hand over his friend for money, to exchange his friend for money. Mary gave all she had to Jesus. All Judas had was Jesus, and he gave him up for some money. This contrast between the two, devotion and betrayal, love and evil, what could this mean for us today? What do we need to see today? One of the challenges from this passage is it is one thing. It is one thing to be near Jesus. It's one thing to be near Jesus, but another thing entirely to belong to Jesus. One of the scariest places to be, this passage shows us, is close to Jesus, but not connected to Jesus. We can't though sit here and just point our finger at Judas we've got to see ourselves in it this from Todd Brewer in an article called Ghost in Jesus he says, when we read stories of the gospels we like to imagine ourselves to be one of the normal disciples sure we're still a work in progress just as they were but we're on the way few imagine themselves to be Judas, but it might be closer to the truth than we're comfortable admitting One day, Judas was a faithful follower, seemingly, and the next day he was a tabloid headline. If you think you're better than Judas, take heed, lest you suffer a similar fall. Judas is a seemingly faithful follower of Jesus. He's near to Jesus physically, but not spiritually. This is challenging for us in the church. We could go to church. It's possible to go to church your whole life. And never take that step of faith that says, I'm trusting Jesus with everything. It's possible to be near to him, but not belong to him, close to him, but not connected to him. This is why the gospel is not just urgent for yet-to-be Christians. Sometimes when we think about the gospel, we can tend to think it is for people, who don't know Jesus yet so they can hear about it and come to know Jesus. This is why the gospel is not just for people who are not yet Christians, but for all of us. It's tempting to think the gospel is the ABCs, as Tim Keller says, of the Christian life, the basics, then you graduate to learn how to be a good person and live a good life. But what we see is the gospel is actually the A to Z. It is the whole of the Christian life, being reminded of Jesus because only the gospel causes us to cling to him above all else, to not betray him for other things. That's what Judas missed entirely. Now, why did Judas miss it? What we see on the surface is the sin Judas has. We see his betrayal, his sin of betrayal, but we don't quite get into and mark his motive. What's under the sin? I could use an image like an iceberg to capture this. So we've got his sin. Sin doesn't happen in a vacuum. This is, by the way, another thing that all Christians and non-Christians share. We're all sinners and we all are prone to worship false gods. It's like an iceberg. We see his sin, we see the actions, we see the outcomes of his betrayal, but we don't quite see his idolatry, what led to the sin. His love of money, which maybe came from a love of control or being right. He loves money, and that is his idolatry or his false God, the thing he worships that is not God. Idolatry is the sin underneath the sin. It's a worship issue. It's when we exchange God for things that are not God. The way Romans 1 describes it is this way. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. In other words, they exchanged the glory of God for things of this world. That's the definition of idolatry. Now, doesn't exchanging the glory of God for things of this world sound exactly like what Judas did? But here in Romans 1, the Apostle Paul is not talking to Judas. He's explaining what all of us do. He's saying we make this exchange of God for the things he made. This tendency to worship things that are not God is not just something that non-Christians have. We share this alike, according to this scientific chart that I made. This was me before Jesus, me after Jesus. We both had idols. Before I came to faith in Christ, my idols, a number of them I can list if we had all day, but some of them were popularity. I wanted people to approve of me. I wanted to make it in my profession to show that I could be somebody. Or just the comfort of a lifestyle of partying, having fun. I have tons of idols from before Jesus, false gods that I worshiped instead of him. What about after? This just happened, I guess, this just happened yesterday. So we bought this pillowcase for the boys. It's an emotional wheel. You ever see this? It's just listed with all the emotions. We get some big feels at our house from time to time, and it's helpful to name those emotions once in a while. Some of you in here are robots, and so you won't understand. Emotions are like, they happen in here. But I'm a big feeler. and sometimes I don't even know what I'm feeling. So having something like this on hand or maybe for toddlers, very helpful. Yesterday, I'm sitting on the couch. This was my view. I'm sitting on the couch. I'm watching my team play soccer. It's a Saturday, a day for rest and relaxation and I'm feeling terrible. I'm feeling bad and I don't know what it is. So I look over at the pillow and it accuses, I mean, it teaches me what I was feeling. The word I was feeling out of the many, many words was guilty. Then I had to say, okay, why am I feeling guilty? I was feeling guilty because, Allison was doing most of the parenting. I was just sitting on the couch. I was feeling guilty because I stopped, because I was not producing anything. I was being wasteful. Now, what does that have to do with idolatry? Well, my emotions revealed that in that moment, I don't actually worship Jesus. I worship what I do. I worship what I produce. That's my functional savior. That's what defines me. My value actually in that moment wasn't coming from Jesus and what he says about me. It was coming from my standard and what I do and produce. And I wasn't living up to that standard, so I was feeling guilt. I needed to be reminded of the gospel. The gospel is for Christians. I had to be reminded that I'm not defined by what I produce or do, but by my Savior. When we get reminded of the gospel as Christians, our lives tend to look a little bit more like marriage. Paul says this in Romans 12, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. You are caused, in other words, by the gospel to give things up, the things of this world, the things we produce, the things we cherish, give them up, live as a sacrifice, that's actually what it looks like to worship. Jesus, Kent Hughes again, says it this way, complete sacrifice is the only adequate expression for a life that has been redeemed by God. This is what Paul meant when he wrote, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. He says, we must ask ourselves, is my devotion to Christ costing me anything? Is there ever any deprivation to it, any inconvenience? She has done what she could. How about us? Now, to get the Gospels to understand this math. To be this kind of sacrifice is to say, I will pour myself out for Jesus. I will give back to him. I owe him everything because he was poured out for me. I have done what I could. This is worship. Now, I want to look back at Mary one more time because they called what she did wasteful. She doesn't do the productive thing with this perfume. instead she she pours it out on jesus she worships she prepares him for his burial it seems wasteful, her response to jesus is insufficient, wasteful illogical but she's not defined by what she does she's defined by who she worships the savior whose sacrifice she mimics. She looks just like Jesus. He deems her beautiful. Why? Because she pours out everything she has. What's he going to do? He's going to give everything he has to people like us. Her worth comes not from what she does, but from the one who honors her, the one who calls her beautiful, the one who will be poured out for her. Now, the challenge when we look at a contrast like this, when we realize the gospel is for Christians, is we also must address non-Christians in the room. We actually expect non-Christians to be here. We want you here, and we want you to understand what the gospel means for you. Now, in 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is talking about the gospel, and he says it is very possible for you to look at the cross of Jesus Christ the way they looked at Mary's perfume and say, it is a waste. Look what he says. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. If you're here and you're a non-Christian or you're just encountering the gospel, your first impression of the cross might be it's inefficient. It's wasteful. It's illogical. What a foolish thing for this beautiful, righteous person to die as an ashamed criminal? Why would I worship one who deserved honor and accepted a criminal's death? Why would I worship him? But don't you see why he died? He died for your sin and your idolatry. Is the cross folly for you, or is it the power of God? For those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And for you in here, if you don't yet know Jesus, the door to salvation is wide open, and you can walk through. Now, just to close, we have in the gospel, we heard a lot of language. Jesus is exchanged by Judas. Judas exchanges Jesus for money. He gives Jesus away for money. That's not the biggest story of exchange though. The gospel itself is the story of God's great exchange. The Son of God being exchanged for us. The gospel is this. I want you to see what gets transferred to him and what gets transferred to us on his cross. Our sin, our shame, our spiritual death, our ultimate spiritual death. I give him my sin. He gives me his righteous record, his perfection. I give him my shame and alienation from God. He gives me his acceptance. I give him my ultimate spiritual death, and he gives me nothing less than eternal life. That's worth more. What he's done for us, this exchange, is worth more than just a jar of perfume or our emergency savings fund or anything else we might think we'd offer to Jesus, it's worth everything. He's worth everything because he's the true jar that was broken and poured out for us. Do you just exchange Jesus for money, Christian or not? We tend to exchange Jesus for the things of this world. One of the things we share as Christians, non-Christians, besides the need for the gospel, besides the fact that we're all sinners, we share all those things. There's one difference. There's one thing that Christians and non-Christians don't share. When we look at all this sin and all this idolatry, what's the one thing that Christians and non-Christians don't share? The question of, do you have Jesus to cover those sins or not? If you don't cling to Jesus, if you don't know Jesus, if your faith is not in Jesus, then you do not have him covering your sins. You're treating the cross as folly, as waste. Is the cross foolishness or is it the power of God? Is it waste or is it everything? Now, just to close, two things. One, what part of the gospel do we actually produce? Do you guys know? The sin that makes it necessary for Jesus to go to the cross. That's what we bring to the table. That Jesus, the only one who deserved heaven, was produced through betrayal for our sin so that we might see his sacrifice and that now it might produce in us the kind of worship that looks like him, willingness to live as a sacrifice, to give everything back to him. How do we become a living sacrifice? Only the gospel. Only the news of the cross, which is for all of us, Can open our eyes to Jesus cause our hearts to pour out like perfume and worship and response They won't pour out for Jesus until we see what Mary saw, That the person of greatest worth, Jesus, the Son of God, is the one Who was poured out for the sins of many He is the one who was broken so that we might be brought in So that we might turn from idols back to the living God. So as we close, we're going to move to a time of communion, but we want to always give an opportunity for a gospel response. So if you're in here and you have yet to trust Christ, today can be the day you take that step. What if one act of faith instead of betrayal, one act of faith could define your life and your eternity? You can trust in him today. For those of us who have trusted in him, we get the chance to pour out our life in response to Jesus, the Savior, who poured out his life for you. Today's a great day to trust in Jesus for the first time or the thousandth time. I'm going to pray and bring the worship team back up, and we're going to move to a time of communion. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we thank you for the beauty of your plan, to exchange your Son, the perfectly righteous one, for sinners like us, that he dies the death we deserve so that we can have life with you, that he is cast out and alienated so we can be brought into your family. I pray for anyone in this room who has yet to trust that news that you would stir in their heart right now and move them to trust in Christ even in this moment. God, I pray for those of us who have trusted in Jesus that we would see his sacrifice and be willing to then pour ourselves out in response to him. We pray all of this in his name. Amen.

Mark 14:1–11 Mark 3 · chapter mention Mark 3 · chapter mention Mark 12 · chapter mention John 12:1–3