AN ACT OF WORSHIP
John 12:1-8
The events of our text take place just six short days before the very day that Jesus would die on the cross.
We see that timing specified in the first verse.
It was a Thursday afternoon in the small town of Bethany.
Bethany is now a suburb of Jerusalem.
In the days of Jesus it was a close outlying town from which one could see the Mount of Olives, and beyond that was the royal Jewish city of Jerusalem.
In this passage Jesus is at the home of a family wherein dwell Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary.
The events of our text come on the heels of one of the most thrilling miracles in all the Bible, and we will explain that as we cover the background of the text a little later on.
It is also mentioned in the very first verse.
Let us read our text:
READ TEXT
PRAY
The scene is set with a great celebration dinner laid out before Jesus and the disciples.
Newly resurrected Lazarus is sitting at the table with Jesus, while Martha is serving the food.
It is to Mary our attention is directed in the third verse.
She enters the room with seemingly little fanfare and great humility and breaks open
a container of fragrant ointment.
Perhaps it is the odor of the spikenard that first catches everyone's attention.
Maybe it is the sound of her shuffling feet as she moves toward Jesus and falls to her knees where He is reclining at the table.
However it was, everyone in the room took notice of her public display of love and adoration for her Saviour.
I want to point out this one thing:
Mary committed a public act of worship.
Let us define worship for our use this morning:
Worship comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word "worthship" which indicates the worthiness of the recipient of worship.
Worship is an acknowledgement of God's attributes and His worthiness.
Our lives should be a constant reflection of this acknowledgement.
We must have the worthiness of God so deeply impressed upon our minds and our hearts that everything we do is for Him and honestly reflects our love and adoration.
However, Mary's actions are above and beyond the normal.
She certainly is living a life of faithfulness and holiness, even taking special care to sit at the feet of Jesus when the opportunity arises and learn more of Him quietly in the congregation as you all are this morning.
This is worship to be sure, but she was moved to break out of her daily routine of worship and do something extravagant!
For her, it was important that people knew how she felt towards Jesus.
It was not enough that she loved Him in her heart.
She was moved to break through her pride and the boundaries of her comfort zone and publicly display her adoration.
This was a public act of worship.
This morning I want to challenge you with Mary's example.
I could chose from several characters in the Bible who committed public acts of worship.
We could look to David, whose public acts of worship drew the attention of a disdainful wife. He had lowered his own dignity to show how much he was caught up in his love for his God.
We could look to Daniel, whose public acts of worship got him thrown into the den of lions. He had risked his life to publicly display his faithfulness to God.
We could point out the woman with the alabaster box in Galilee who drew the criticism of the Pharisees with her similar testimony of adoration for Jesus.
We could move closer to the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus and show an unnamed woman whose similar testimony of the worthiness of Jesus drew the criticism of all the disciples.
I have pointed out these few of many examples in Scripture to show the importance of committing public acts of worship.
In each case there was a risk to the worshipper, a risk of drawing the criticism of the convicted.
I would also challenge you today to not be critical of those who are led to commit public acts of worship.
The crowd in the room, for the most part, took in the greater lesson of the act of worship.
They smelled the fragrance and saw the devotion of the woman.
They listened to Jesus interpret the act of worship to be a precursor to His own great sacrifice.
They must have been moved deeply by Mary's actions.
However, there was a critic in the room.
He had a dark heart and was clearly convicted by what he deemed a spectacle.
He points out from his unemotional pragmatic perspective that this could have been handled better.
Mary would have been better to quietly sell the spikenard and give the money to the poor. (Verse 4-6)
Judas had a point of course.
Mary could have kept her love for Christ more to herself and just handed over the money to Judas to distribute as he saw fit.
It would have been the more dignified approach and would have been much less risky.
It certainly would not have drawn any criticism.
But we would have been robbed of the beautiful lesson of her devotion to the person of Jesus.
The mandate of the text which I would like to point out this morning is:
Every Christian must commit public acts of worship.
As usual, there are clear motivations here in the Bible for obeying this principle.
These motivations are all about the worthiness of Jesus.
When you ask the question, "Why must I commit public acts of worship?"
The answer is always, "because He is worthy of them."
Our text shows a few of the ways in which Jesus warrants the worship of Mary and, of course, that of us as well.
Because Jesus gives life to the dead. Verse 1
Mary committed this public act of worship because Jesus raised her brother from the dead.
The whole story is in the previous chapter.
Chapter 11 Verse 43-44 give the actual resurrection event.
Jesus called forth dead Lazarus in much the same way He gives every man and woman the opportunity to come out of their own dead state to receive new life in Him.
When Lazarus came staggering out of the tomb, Jesus concerns himself with removing the trappings of death from Lazarus.
So it is when we respond to the life-giving call of Jesus, we are to rid ourselves of the trappings of the old life and put on a new man which is born in holiness.
We then have much for which to praise Him, for He has given life to the dead.
He is due our public acts of worship.
Has Jesus given you new life?
Has he warranted a public act of worship?
Because Jesus is faithful to His own. Chapter 11
The second motivation that we see from the text is Mary’s own journey towards recognizing the faithfulness of Jesus.
We know that she was always close to Jesus.
In the other gospels we see her sitting at the feet of Jesus learning from Him while Martha busies herself in the kitchen.
She was convinced then that it was important to attend the service that Jesus was giving.
Then Jesus was away and her brother got very sick.
She and Martha sent for Jesus to come and heal him.
Jesus had other priorities and Lazarus had died.
When finally Jesus did come, the word reached Mary and Martha's home, but only Martha ran to meet Him. (John 11:20-22)
Only Martha expressed faith that Jesus could make this tragedy into something beautiful.
Mary, it seems, was so broken by the disappointment that she stayed home.
Jesus had to send specifically for her (Chapter 11 Verse 28).
Have you ever lost faith and harbored bitterness toward God for some tragedy that was allowed to befall you?
Jesus is calling for you.
He want you to see what He has planned.
He can make something beautiful from your sadness.
Imagine the shame of having doubted Jesus and spurned His coming into town.
Mary had some powerful motivation to commit a public act of worship.
She had been through a great tragedy and great sorrow and found Jesus to be faithful.
Because Jesus gave his life for all. Verse 7,8,32,33
The third motivation that I see is the one that Jesus Himself points out.
The fact that Jesus was willing to lay down His own life was motivation enough to lay down her pride and her dignity and commit this public act of worship.
Jesus indicated that He would publicly display His love for the world.
He would be lifted up in shame on the cross and then would draw all men unto Himself.
When we look at the selfless character of Jesus and we see his public act of love for us, how can we respond in any other way than to commit public acts of worship of Him?
As with any command we can derive from the pages of Scripture, this one has some clear and powerful instructions by way of example that we can follow in our public acts of worship.
This is important because if you just decide that you are going to commit public acts of worship without following the example of Mary in our text, you may result in a flesh-led display that distracts from the object of your worship instead of a Spirit-led display that lifts up the Lord.
By giving God what is precious to you. Verse 3
Mary did not give something cheap.
She pulled out all the stops and gave something very costly.
I don't know what is most costly to you.
Maybe you have something precious that you know God could use for His glory.
You know He values thing a bit differently than we do.
It may be your pride that He wants.
It may be your dignity.
It may be your wallet.
It may be your car.
It may be your most precious relationship.
Whatever it is, be willing to part with it for His sake, and you will find that He makes something greater of it than you could have imagined.
By humbling yourself before God. Verse 3
Mary did not dance around and draw attention to herself in the small room.
She did not lift herself up in her act of worship.
This was about lifting up Jesus and humbling herself.
Try to imagine the humility that she must have felt to have doubted Jesus and even perhaps harboring bitterness towards him when her brother died.
She came to Jesus and fell to her knees.
She broke open the extravagant gift and then wiped His feet with her hair.
What a display of humility!
There was a time when it was common to come forward after a service and fall to the knees and quietly confess sin at the altar.
It wouldn't hurt to do that more often.
Have you doubted God?
Come confess that to Him at the altar.
Have you fallen short of His expectations for you?
Humble yourself before Him and beg His forgiveness.
He certainly has that in great supply.
By displaying your affection for God. Verse 3
The last practical step that I can see in Mary's example is her clear display of affection.
Let us not be ashamed to say how much we love Him!
Let us not be ashamed to witness of His great sacrifice.
When you are moved to commit an act of worship, stop and think of how you might show your love for Jesus.
Think about how you might lift Him up and humble yourself.
So often what passes for worship in some churches today is more of a spectacle of self than a display of affection for Jesus.
Let us not fall into that trap.
He has laid down his life so that you might live.
Won't you commit a public act of worship to Him?
John 12:1-8
The events of our text take place just six short days before the very day that Jesus would die on the cross.
We see that timing specified in the first verse.
It was a Thursday afternoon in the small town of Bethany.
Bethany is now a suburb of Jerusalem.
In the days of Jesus it was a close outlying town from which one could see the Mount of Olives, and beyond that was the royal Jewish city of Jerusalem.
In this passage Jesus is at the home of a family wherein dwell Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary.
The events of our text come on the heels of one of the most thrilling miracles in all the Bible, and we will explain that as we cover the background of the text a little later on.
It is also mentioned in the very first verse.
Let us read our text:
READ TEXT
PRAY
The scene is set with a great celebration dinner laid out before Jesus and the disciples.
Newly resurrected Lazarus is sitting at the table with Jesus, while Martha is serving the food.
It is to Mary our attention is directed in the third verse.
She enters the room with seemingly little fanfare and great humility and breaks open
a container of fragrant ointment.Perhaps it is the odor of the spikenard that first catches everyone's attention.
Maybe it is the sound of her shuffling feet as she moves toward Jesus and falls to her knees where He is reclining at the table.
However it was, everyone in the room took notice of her public display of love and adoration for her Saviour.
I want to point out this one thing:
Mary committed a public act of worship.
Let us define worship for our use this morning:
Worship comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word "worthship" which indicates the worthiness of the recipient of worship.
Worship is an acknowledgement of God's attributes and His worthiness.
Our lives should be a constant reflection of this acknowledgement.
We must have the worthiness of God so deeply impressed upon our minds and our hearts that everything we do is for Him and honestly reflects our love and adoration.
However, Mary's actions are above and beyond the normal.
She certainly is living a life of faithfulness and holiness, even taking special care to sit at the feet of Jesus when the opportunity arises and learn more of Him quietly in the congregation as you all are this morning.
This is worship to be sure, but she was moved to break out of her daily routine of worship and do something extravagant!
For her, it was important that people knew how she felt towards Jesus.
It was not enough that she loved Him in her heart.
She was moved to break through her pride and the boundaries of her comfort zone and publicly display her adoration.
This was a public act of worship.
This morning I want to challenge you with Mary's example.
I could chose from several characters in the Bible who committed public acts of worship.
We could look to David, whose public acts of worship drew the attention of a disdainful wife. He had lowered his own dignity to show how much he was caught up in his love for his God.
We could look to Daniel, whose public acts of worship got him thrown into the den of lions. He had risked his life to publicly display his faithfulness to God.
We could point out the woman with the alabaster box in Galilee who drew the criticism of the Pharisees with her similar testimony of adoration for Jesus.
We could move closer to the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus and show an unnamed woman whose similar testimony of the worthiness of Jesus drew the criticism of all the disciples.
I have pointed out these few of many examples in Scripture to show the importance of committing public acts of worship.
In each case there was a risk to the worshipper, a risk of drawing the criticism of the convicted.
I would also challenge you today to not be critical of those who are led to commit public acts of worship.
The crowd in the room, for the most part, took in the greater lesson of the act of worship.
They smelled the fragrance and saw the devotion of the woman.
They listened to Jesus interpret the act of worship to be a precursor to His own great sacrifice.
They must have been moved deeply by Mary's actions.
However, there was a critic in the room.
He had a dark heart and was clearly convicted by what he deemed a spectacle.
He points out from his unemotional pragmatic perspective that this could have been handled better.
Mary would have been better to quietly sell the spikenard and give the money to the poor. (Verse 4-6)
Judas had a point of course.
Mary could have kept her love for Christ more to herself and just handed over the money to Judas to distribute as he saw fit.
It would have been the more dignified approach and would have been much less risky.
It certainly would not have drawn any criticism.
But we would have been robbed of the beautiful lesson of her devotion to the person of Jesus.
The mandate of the text which I would like to point out this morning is:
Every Christian must commit public acts of worship.
As usual, there are clear motivations here in the Bible for obeying this principle.
These motivations are all about the worthiness of Jesus.
When you ask the question, "Why must I commit public acts of worship?"
The answer is always, "because He is worthy of them."
Our text shows a few of the ways in which Jesus warrants the worship of Mary and, of course, that of us as well.
Because Jesus gives life to the dead. Verse 1
Mary committed this public act of worship because Jesus raised her brother from the dead.
The whole story is in the previous chapter.
Chapter 11 Verse 43-44 give the actual resurrection event.
Jesus called forth dead Lazarus in much the same way He gives every man and woman the opportunity to come out of their own dead state to receive new life in Him.
When Lazarus came staggering out of the tomb, Jesus concerns himself with removing the trappings of death from Lazarus.
So it is when we respond to the life-giving call of Jesus, we are to rid ourselves of the trappings of the old life and put on a new man which is born in holiness.
We then have much for which to praise Him, for He has given life to the dead.
He is due our public acts of worship.
Has Jesus given you new life?
Has he warranted a public act of worship?
Because Jesus is faithful to His own. Chapter 11
The second motivation that we see from the text is Mary’s own journey towards recognizing the faithfulness of Jesus.
We know that she was always close to Jesus.
In the other gospels we see her sitting at the feet of Jesus learning from Him while Martha busies herself in the kitchen.
She was convinced then that it was important to attend the service that Jesus was giving.
Then Jesus was away and her brother got very sick.
She and Martha sent for Jesus to come and heal him.
Jesus had other priorities and Lazarus had died.
When finally Jesus did come, the word reached Mary and Martha's home, but only Martha ran to meet Him. (John 11:20-22)
Only Martha expressed faith that Jesus could make this tragedy into something beautiful.
Mary, it seems, was so broken by the disappointment that she stayed home.
Jesus had to send specifically for her (Chapter 11 Verse 28).
Have you ever lost faith and harbored bitterness toward God for some tragedy that was allowed to befall you?
Jesus is calling for you.
He want you to see what He has planned.
He can make something beautiful from your sadness.
Imagine the shame of having doubted Jesus and spurned His coming into town.
Mary had some powerful motivation to commit a public act of worship.
She had been through a great tragedy and great sorrow and found Jesus to be faithful.
Because Jesus gave his life for all. Verse 7,8,32,33
The third motivation that I see is the one that Jesus Himself points out.
The fact that Jesus was willing to lay down His own life was motivation enough to lay down her pride and her dignity and commit this public act of worship.
Jesus indicated that He would publicly display His love for the world.
He would be lifted up in shame on the cross and then would draw all men unto Himself.When we look at the selfless character of Jesus and we see his public act of love for us, how can we respond in any other way than to commit public acts of worship of Him?
As with any command we can derive from the pages of Scripture, this one has some clear and powerful instructions by way of example that we can follow in our public acts of worship.
This is important because if you just decide that you are going to commit public acts of worship without following the example of Mary in our text, you may result in a flesh-led display that distracts from the object of your worship instead of a Spirit-led display that lifts up the Lord.
By giving God what is precious to you. Verse 3
Mary did not give something cheap.
She pulled out all the stops and gave something very costly.
I don't know what is most costly to you.
Maybe you have something precious that you know God could use for His glory.
You know He values thing a bit differently than we do.
It may be your pride that He wants.
It may be your dignity.
It may be your wallet.
It may be your car.
It may be your most precious relationship.
Whatever it is, be willing to part with it for His sake, and you will find that He makes something greater of it than you could have imagined.
By humbling yourself before God. Verse 3
Mary did not dance around and draw attention to herself in the small room.
She did not lift herself up in her act of worship.
This was about lifting up Jesus and humbling herself.
Try to imagine the humility that she must have felt to have doubted Jesus and even perhaps harboring bitterness towards him when her brother died.
She came to Jesus and fell to her knees.
She broke open the extravagant gift and then wiped His feet with her hair.
What a display of humility!
There was a time when it was common to come forward after a service and fall to the knees and quietly confess sin at the altar.
It wouldn't hurt to do that more often.
Have you doubted God?
Come confess that to Him at the altar.
Have you fallen short of His expectations for you?
Humble yourself before Him and beg His forgiveness.
He certainly has that in great supply.
By displaying your affection for God. Verse 3
The last practical step that I can see in Mary's example is her clear display of affection.
Let us not be ashamed to say how much we love Him!
Let us not be ashamed to witness of His great sacrifice.
When you are moved to commit an act of worship, stop and think of how you might show your love for Jesus.
Think about how you might lift Him up and humble yourself.
So often what passes for worship in some churches today is more of a spectacle of self than a display of affection for Jesus.
Let us not fall into that trap.
He has laid down his life so that you might live.
Won't you commit a public act of worship to Him?
No comments:
Post a Comment