The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:00:00 today's scripture reading is taken from Matthew 26: 1-16 when Jesus had finished saying all these things he said to his disciples as you know the Passover is two days away and the son of man will be handed over to be crucified then the chief priests and the Elders of the people assembled in the Palace of the high priest whose name was Caiaphas and they schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him but not during the festival they said or there may be a riot among the people while Jesus was in Bethany in the home of
00:00:41 Simon the leper a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table when the disciples saw this they were indignant why this waste they asked this perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor aware of this Jesus said to them why are you bothering this woman she has done a beautiful thing to me the poor you will always have with you but you will not always have me when she poured this perfume on my body she did it to prepare
00:01:23 me for burial truly I tell you wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world what she has done will also be told in memory of her then one of the 12 the one called Judas is scariot went to the chief priests and asked what are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you so they counted out for him 30 pieces of silver from then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over this is the word of God thank you Michelle for reading the word of God once again it's my joy and privilege
00:02:14 to be standing here sharing with you from the word of God truly is uh great to be found in the house of the Lord on the first day of the week uh to be connected in in fellowship with the community of Believers as we begin the week now we are still in uh in our long running series on the Book of Matthew and we have come to the the final lab in this series with uh I think about four more sermons to go um next Sunday uh brother ulam will take us through the middle part of uh chapter 26 and then the following Sunday after that Dr Peter
00:02:54 will cover the rest of chapter 26 and also a little bit of uh chapter 27 7 this morning the sermon text is based on the chapter 26 the first 16 verses with the title The anointing of Jesus this is the account of an unnamed woman anointing Jesus with expensive perfume in this as depicted in this 1860 painting it's account that many of you are familiar with or at least have heard of now we seek to understand what this narrative is all about and to uncover the deeper meaning behind what she did for Jesus and we shall do this
00:03:40 by trying to to ascertain whether this is an isolated incident or whether is part of a larger picture the structure of the text is rather interesting and it can tell us a lot about what is going on at this point in the life of Jesus more crucially as with any sermon we want to take home uh what is practical um we want to see the Practical lessons behind the text that can Propel us in our journey of Faith let's pray before we start our father in Heaven may your word speak aloud to us this morning and may your spirit move
00:04:24 powerfully in our midst as we examine this portion of scripture grant that these verses minister to us so that we may relate to you in the manner that we ought to putting you front and center in our lives so that the conduct of our faith will be pleasing to you like the fragrance of perfume for we ask this in the name of your son amen about two months ago uh my wife and I took a trip to England where we love to travel and I can tell you it felt really good to be able to travel again after I think about two and a half years
00:05:12 of being stuck here but the main purpose of our of the trip was to attend our daughter Melody's graduation she was supposed to graduate in 2020 but because of the pandemic the convocation was delayed to this year well better late than never so you can imagine hundreds of parents in the hall beaming with pride to witness their sons and daughters graduating it was a huge milestone for Melody marking the end of her long academic Journey it was it was a major milestone for us too as parents it was a moment that we had been
00:05:56 waiting for for 27 years since she was born finally she had become of age but maybe more importantly finally she wouldn't be asking us for money M stones are good to help us Mark our progress in often long and winding roads we all take long Journeys in life not only uh those related to academic studies but also in our marriage age in our career upbringing of children and of course in our journey of Faith but what I want to illustrate here isn't Milestones but something else and so we were seated among all the
00:06:46 proud parents and the graduates by the hundreds uh took turns to line up on one side of the hall waiting for their names to be called before they went up the stage to receive their degrees we were stretching our neck out you know trying to spot her do you see her where is she and then finally the moment arrived her name was called and she went up in confidence stries to receive a degree from the vice Chancellor I don't know how else to describe this wonderful feeling in our hearts Pride joy and maybe a bit of relief
00:07:33 I also thought for a while wow this has cost us many thousand ring just to see this but what has all this got to do with the anointing of Jesus you see I I'm showing you all this because I want you all to imagine a a bizarre hypothetical situation now imagine instead of this lady Vice Chancellor standing there instead of the most important person in the University conferring the degrees what if what if one of the cleaning ladies were to give out the degrees what if they had a lonely individual with no standing at all
00:08:20 standing there to hand the students their accolades of course it defies imagination it wouldn't be acceptable in might even diminish the quality of the degree but please keep this in mind as I'm setting up the stage for what we about to see in our text from Matthew 16 this is just to to W to W your appetite for what's in store in these verses so let's put this aside for a while as we dive into the text chapter 26 begins with the phrase when Jesus had finished saying all these things this is in reference to all that
00:08:57 he had said in chapters 24 and 25 5 over two long chapters Jesus had been talking and and prophesizing about events at the end of time and now in chapter 26 and also in 27 Matthew starts to write about events at the end of his life so verse one here is is like a little milestone in the Book of Matthew it it denotes the start of a new narrative is the writer's way of saying Jesus had finished saying all he needed to say and now he's ready to face the cross to fulfill the main purpose of his coming that is to die and atoning death
00:09:38 for our salvation and Jesus himself attested to this when he said to his disciples in verse two the Passover is two days away and the son of man will be handed over to be crucified so this is the beginning of the end chronologically it says uh uh it says clearly here that we are two days before the crucifixion so it's Wes day in the final week of Jesus and it starts with the Jewish leaders concocting a plot to arrest Jesus and to kill him from the next three verses we will touch on more on that
00:10:14 later but before that let's zoom out and take a bird's eye view of all 16 verses it's plain to see that the text is divided into into three separate parts Part One the plot from the first five verses their evil plot to kill Jesus part two the perfume from verses 6 to13 the expensive perfume that the unnamed woman used to anoint Jesus and then part three the payment versus 14- 16 the blood money they paid to Judas to betray Jesus all these are really the just the Prelude or like an ier to the passion
00:11:01 narrative if you don't already know whenever we hear the term The Passion of Christ it refers to Jesus sufferings and death including his arrests the trials his crucifixion and his burial in other words the events in our text all these three parts together are actually a kind of a builtup to the passion narrative and hence when we survey the rest of chapter 26 below our text what comes next is the Passover meal or the Last Supper in the upper room and then the prayers of Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane and following that the
00:11:40 passion account itself until the end of chapter 26 and continuing all the way to the whole of chapter 27 but back to the structure in our text the first 16 verses you will agree that verse 5 in part one actually connects with verse 14 in part three that is while they were plotting to have Jesus killed and they made a deal with Judas to to hand to have Jesus handed over and then that's how the two parts are connected so that if I just toose part one and part three side by side The Narrative will come across more
00:12:23 seamless what I'm trying to point out here is that in between narrating the plot and the subsequent payment the writer seems to have digressed to talk about the anointing of Jesus by the woman it's an interesting structure in our text I call it the uh the burger structure the two pieces of bread on the top and bottom represent part one and part three involving those in the evil camp and in the middle the more important part of the burger represents part two featuring the unnamed woman and we are l to wonder why the writer chose
00:13:02 to insert this anointing of Jesus within the the larger Narrative of events leading to the cross and I shall address this later but because of this structure what I will do is that I will discuss part one and part three together since they are supposed to be one seamless narrative and then we'll finish with part three on the anointing of Jesus which is the more instructive part to get on with um with with uh with part one the chief priests the Elders of the people and the high priests they come together to
00:13:39 scheme how they might finish Jesus off this isn't the first time the Jewish leaders are bent on killing him as early as in Matthew 12:14 Jesus when Jesus healed the man with the shiv hand on the on the Sabbath they became so angry and they had decided to get rid of him but now they are desperate they have witnessed the growing reputation of Jesus and they feel so threatened and just a few days ago they they watched with great alarm how the crowd welcome Jesus as he made his triumphal entry into
00:14:20 Jerusalem so you can you can picture the Jewish leaders sitting around conspiring conniving and loing what shall we do but they have to be careful not to trigger a riot from verse 5 as Jesus has become very popular with the masses they have to seize Jesus quietly and and secretly possibly in the we hours of the morning but how are they going to execute their plans is not as if Jesus has a a fixed address in Jerusalem he's always on the move and so so we can imagine them cracking their heads over
00:15:02 this but to their surprise and Glee Judas suddenly walks in with an offer we are now looking at part three of the text verses 14 and 15 then the one called Judas Iscariot went to the chief priests and asked what are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you Judas is offering to become an Informer a turn coat and what better than someone from within Jesus Inner Circle one of the 12 disciples he can tip them off on Jesus movement and identify him when the soldiers come to take him away so that he won't arrest
00:15:43 the wrong person and so the the deal is cut and the prize agreed upon Judas will do it for 30 pieces of silver from verse 15 okay 30 pieces of silver sound like a lot of money but what is it really worth and to answer this some background information from history might be useful the silver pieces mentioned here are actually silver coins most likely this particular coin minted in the city of tire at that time with 94% silver the value of this silver coin is 1 Denarius the Denarius being the the standard uh uh unit of currency in the
00:16:35 Roman Empire now do we know the exchange rate between the Denarius and the ring gate is is there such a thing one way of looking at this is to consider the fact that one Denarius this one coin in those days is equivalent to the wage of a laborer per day and we know this from Matthew 20 from the parable of the of the workers in the vineyard so if we assume the the monthly salary of a laborer today uh to be say 3,000 ring and assuming 25 let's say 25 working days so his daily wage 3,000 25 will work out to be 120 ring so the exchange
00:17:24 rate unofficial H the the exchange rate is roughly one Denarius to 120 ring Judas was paid 30 silver coins the equivalent of 30 dinari sorry Denarius is the singular dinari is the plural a bit of English yeah so Judas was SP 30 silver coins the equivalent of 30 dinari which means about 3,600 ring which really isn't a lot canot cannot even cover half the cost of our trip to England last June now this will be relevant later as we because we want to compare the value of these 30 silver coins with the value
00:18:12 of the perfume um used by the woman in part two but the more interesting question is why pay Judas 30 of this coin why not 50 or 100 or even 30 00 why 30 and here we have to do some cross referencing often one Bible passage of verse is is connected to another which can which can make a Bible study very engaging as we search for and examine a related verses in other parts of the Bible the reason or rather the answer as to why 30 silver coins is found in Zechariah 11:12 and in in this heart to understand
00:18:59 passage the prophet Zachariah was at that time the shepherd to the Israelites who were about to be judged by God due to their Rebellion against God anyway Zechariah went to the leaders of uh the southern nation of Judah and asked to be paid for his work if they saw it fit to pay him to which they decided to compensate him 30 pieces of silver now Zechariah felt very insulted to be paid this amount it's like they didn't value or think highly of his ministry but why did he feel so insulted now to understand this we now turn to to
00:19:43 a very bizarre law from the time of Moses in Exodus 21:32 at this is cross referencing it was stipulated that this there was this law that if your bull kills someone's slave then you must compensate the Master of the slave 30 shekels of silver that was the value they placed on the life of a lowly slave and because of this 30 pieces of silver has come to denotes something demeaning it has come to be associated with something that we have contempt for and when the Jewish leaders paid Judas the 30 silver coins they most
00:20:27 certainly had Zechariah 11 and exodus 21 in mind the 30 silver coins was blood Money meaning Money Paid in exchange for someone's life and he shows how low of value they place on jesus' life and here I need to point out something interesting on the site back to uh Zechariah 11 you see the book of Zechariah contains many Messianic prophecies meaning prophecies pointing to Jesus for example Jesus the triumphal entry into Jerusalem was actually prophesied in Zechariah 9:9 now here this verse 12 and the next
00:21:12 verse in Zechariah 11 is also a Messianic prophecy pointing to the Betrayal of Jesus for merely 30 pieces of silver and that this this prophecy has been fulfilled as we know and and and you acknowledge that in the next chapter chapter 27 but that's outside the scope of our our discussion before we move on one side question that begs to be asked is why did Judas betray betray his Lord why this treacherous Act was it for the money was he greedy possibly because Judas loved money but I think unlikely because as we
00:22:07 saw just now the 30 silver coins weren all that much in terms of value another popular view is based on Luke 22:3 which says that Satan entered Judas just before he went to the Jewish leader to sell Jesus out Satan entered Judas in other words Satan made him do it pin the blame on Satan interestingly in 1981 there was a court case in America in Connecticut actual case where a certain Arie Johnson was charged with the murder of his landlord his defense was that he was demon possessed he admitted that he killed the
00:22:58 victim but he maintained that he was made to do it by the demon it became well known as the devil made me do it a case devil made me do it but the judge wasn't buying any of this and Mr Johnson was later convicted of first degree manslaughter certainly the devil can tempt us and dece us and he often does it subtly and and and effectively we must be Vigilant but whenever we commit a sin it is ultimately out of our own volition we cannot blame it on someone else and that's why later when Judas regretted what he did he tried to return
00:23:43 the money to the chief priest and this is what he said he told them in Matthew 27:4 I have sinned I have sinned for I have betray innocent blood he didn't say oh Satan made me do it so he is it because of the money maybe but not likely did Satan make him do it certainly not although Satan must have played a big part I'm sorry about the Bible doesn't really tell us why he did it the best conjecture I have seen with some inference from from chapter 27 is that Judas had a motive that was political in
00:24:26 nature this view holds that Judas was what we what we would call today a nationalist he detested the Roman occupiers and he wanted them out and for three years they had been hearing Jesus talking about the kingdom of God often through Parables right from the start of his ministry Jesus had been preaching repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near Matthew 4:17 but as J as far as Judah is concerned after three long years the kingdom is nowhere near the speculation is that he was frustrated at the a slow pace of how
00:25:08 events were unfolding so perhaps he could speed things up a little perhaps Jesus need a bit of help not unlike what Abraham and Sarah tried to do when God seemed to be moving too slowly and that's what impatience does to us and so he reckoned that that if he could get Jesus arrested he he he would respond he will surely respond with the display of his power maybe summoning a an Angelic host to to to destroy the Romans and that way he thought would hasten the dawn of the kingdom of God after which as one of the
00:25:50 12 disciples he would be among the chief uh beneficiaries as treasurer of the group now who knows maybe he can he might get to be appointed Minister of Finance but how wrong he was how little he knew Jesus you may be a Christian for many years but you may not know God well how little he knew Jesus especially when Jesus had on multiple occasions hinted that his mission was to come to suffer and die for our sake for example in these verses in Matthew chapters 16 and 17 we have hints clear hints that Jesus
00:26:36 had come to die now Jes now Judas had completely misunderstood or ignored these words of Jesus often we can be so fixated on a certain course of action that we refuse to look at other hints or suggestions that our plan may may not be such a good idea anyway all this is still just a conjecture no matter how plausible it is we may not know exactly why Judas did what he did but we also don't want to attribute the wrong reasons to why he did it we have finished uh part one in part three uh let's proceed to part two of
00:27:18 the text the middle part of the burger the more important part on the anointing of Jesus we note earlier that Matthew sandwiched this anointing of Jesus in between the larger Narrative of events leading to the passion account and we will see why uh later uh why he wrote this way and so while the while the Jewish leaders were plotting among themselves and then transacting with Judas Jesus is engaged in a nice social function in the home of a person named Simon in a place called Bethany which is just outside of uh Jerusalem to the
00:28:01 east we see that they are enjoying a meal because Jesus is reclining at the table in those days that's how they set while having a meal on reclining chairs in the opening slide I showed this 19th century piece of art but the chair is wrong the artist didn't read the text properly and now this painting is more accurate with Jesus on a reclining chair the host described as Simon the leper now he must have been healed of his leprosy uh uh earlier by Jesus otherwise no one would there to go near him worse than the covid
00:28:46 positive perhaps out of gratitude he has invited Jesus and his on tourach for a meal at his house the disciples were there minus Joseph minus Judas because he had gone to to see the chief priests now before we go any further I need to digress to clarify something earli I mentioned that many of us are familiar with the account of the anointing of Jesus but the thing is we may not be talking about the same event the anointing of Jesus is recorded in all four gospels not only Matthew but also in mark Luke and
00:29:29 John which is the one you're familiar with what do you mean aren't they all the same you''ll be surprised to know that the anointing of Jesus happened more than on more than one occasion more than once but it all appears so similar that many people think it it's the same event documented by all four gospel writers in their own way here is a comparison among all four narratives on the anointing there's a lot of information this in this chart but briefly we need to try to digest everything here but briefly there
00:30:09 is not one but three separate occasions when Jesus was anointed Jesus was anointed three times by three different women and I suspect that what you have in mind is the anointing account in Luke either Luke 7 or John 12 where the anointer Paul fume on jesus' feet and wiping them with her hair the narrative in Luke 7 is the first one the first anointing and happened up in Galilee much earlier in Jesus ministry the second anointing is in John 12 and it took place 6 days before the crucifixion so 4 days before
00:30:49 our text not the last and third anointing is what we're talking about recorded in Matthew 26 and Mark 14 and as we seen earlier we are just two days before the crucifixion the more notable difference here compared to the first two is that Jesus was anointed on his head here's an interesting piece of art found in a 13th century manuscript in Switzerland can you see what's going on here the artist has had decided to combine in one p picture all the occasions when Jesus was anointed maybe he was too lazy to draw
00:31:34 three paintings so just lump everything together like those uh threein one coffee sachets but it's not so biblical H they didn't happen together continuing with part two while they are eating an unnamed unidentified woman walks in un invited unannounced holding a jar of expensive perfume now in the culture of those days when the host is entertaining a guest no woman would sit at the at the at the dinner table and so imagine the host annoyance when not only someone Uninvited comes in what's worth a
00:32:21 woman the jar she's holding is made from Alabaster Alabaster is a translucent stone that fused like marble is often carved into into bottles or vases or ornamental objects but what's more important of course is the content of the bottle she's holding verse 7 in our text merely says a jar of expensive perfume well what kind of perfume how expensive and here we turn to the parallel text in in in Mark 14 of the same account and we find surprisingly more details there the perfume is identified as pure
00:33:05 nut what is nut or sometimes known as Spike nut is a class of strong aromatic oil extracted from a from a flowering plant found in the Himalayas it clings onto the skin so that after a long time you can still smell you know the fragrance on the skin but the Himalayas is very very far from Israel and that's why it was a very very expensive perfume in jesus' time imported from India Overland but how expensive in fact its value is also stated right here its value is equivalent to a Year's wages now in our text in the Matthew
00:33:51 26:9 it merely says a high price so here is more specific what's the equivalent of a year of wages well as we saw just now one day's wage is one Denarius one years wages would be 300 dinari if REM mind us of the off days and all the public holidays so the woman's perfume was worth 300 dinari if you still remember the exchange rate one dinus to 120 ring so we're talking about a bottle of 36,000 ring perfume I'm not into perfume so it's hard for me to to make sense of this so I Google and check channel number
00:34:44 five this is a 225 mil bottle roughly the size of a alabaster jar and it's 12,800 ring now this is from Chanel website that means the the perfume that the the woman use in our text is about three times more expensive than channel number five her one bottle can buy three bottles of this isly I also found Chanel Number Five at Lazada it cost only 15 ring I couldn't relieve my eyes now look carefully you know it says what inspired by Chanel Number Five this is fake Chanel made in China be very careful when you shop at
00:35:39 Lazada okay sorry for the diversion to Lazada anyway what happens next is that she approaches Jesus and anoints him by pouring the perfume on his head is an extravagant Act of wor worship and it's not just drops of perfume but the whole bottle is emptied so that the liquid flows down to jesus' body and because the the perfume is so expensive the response from the disciples is one of scone and ridicule hey what are you doing crazy are you we can sell this for 36k you know and and use the money to help the poor
00:36:26 why waste like this well their desire to help the needy is certainly very commendable but somewhat misplaced she is expressing her de deep devotion toward Jesus while they are voicing their concern for the poor who is correct and here lies a sight lesson for us from the text of course helping the poor is a laudable enterpr Christ but you see the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God followed by the second greatest commandment to love your neighbor loving our neighbor including the poor comes
00:37:11 after loving God and not the other way around so the woman in our text got her priorities right in fact we might say that loving our neighbor is the result of first loving God it is the response we show when we love God loving your neighbor without first loving God makes your effort a kind of Salvation by works as the disciples were chastising the woman Jesus intervenes to Shield her from their criticism hey please leave her alone you know why are you so hard on her in the words of Jesus in verse 10
00:37:55 why are you bothering this woman she has done a beautiful thing to me what is interesting here is that while what the woman has done is clearly an act of worship and Devotion to Jesus we don't see Jesus praising her for that we don't see Jesus singling her out for her display of love of God and then telling the rest to do likewise instead Jesus commends her for doing a beautiful thing what is this beautiful thing is explained or described in verse 12 in anointing Jesus the woman is unintentionally preparing Jesus for
00:38:43 burial Unk knowing to her she was preparing Jesus for his burial now you might be a bit confused here let me explain you see back then this n oil was no not only used as a perfume but also in preparing the body of a dead person for burial together with other spices like mer the disease is was normally placed in a tomb and in order to to reduce or to fight the stench you know from decomposition a lot of spice and oil was applied to the dead body of course this was done after the person has just died so but in this case Jesus is is
00:39:28 receiving the knot oil 2 days early he's been prepared for his burial 2 days early which makes sense because on Friday afternoon by the time Jesus body was taken down from the cross it will be close to sunet close to the start of the Passover and there will be little time to give his body a proper preparation for burial and Jesus knows that and he appreciates this woman for doing for him this beautiful thing some of you may Wonder wouldn't the knut oil wear out by Friday today is Wednesday will the
00:40:08 perfume still stick 2 days later if you remember what I said about not oil being a very strong perfume it sticks to your skin for a long time now to continue is unlikely that the woman knows anything about Jesus impending death she just wants to honor Jesus with her expensive perfume nonetheless in coming to her defense Jesus using her action to once again remind the disciples that the hour of his death is fast approaching recall in part one Jesus told his disciples the Passover is two days away the son of man will be handed
00:40:54 over to be crucified and hence you see this unmistakable shadow of the Cross being cast across the text including here in part two Jesus is casting his eyes on the cross he's focusing on the cross now to wrap up uh part two of our text a little bit more to go I wish to touch on a secondary meaning behind the anointing of Jesus that is not so Apparent from the verses you see throughout the old test anointing was often done to signify selection for a special role or task it involves smearing or pouring oil on
00:41:38 someone's head to symbolize that God had chosen him or set him apart for a specific purpose so anointing in the Old Testament has a lot to do with role or task or or purpose and hence in 1 Samuel 16 the prophet Samuel samel anointed David with oil to designate him to become king also in Exodus 30 Moses anointed Aaron and his sons with oil to consecrate them to serve as priests and again in 1 Kings 19 the Prophet Elijah anointed Elisha to succeed him as Prophet here in our text although Jesus linked the anointing by the woman to his
00:42:24 death and Burial at the deeper level going by this uh Old Testament motives it is evident that the anointing Also Serve to confirm the purpose for which Jesus was born that is to die on the cross for our sake the anointing also served to consecrate him to the task before him two days later which is to go which is to go to the Cross which means that while the Jewish leaders were conspiring to kill Jesus and colluding with with Judas to make it happen at that same time Jesus was being anointed for the task of dying on the
00:43:05 cross the writer of our text is like saying while those guys are planning to execute Jesus he is being set apart for that very outcome the one setting the agenda is not them but it's God himself despite their evil God's purpose is served to quote from Genesis 50:20 you intended to harm me but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done the saving of many lives and that is why in between all the plotting and scheming in part one in part three of our text Matthew inserted this Narrative
00:43:47 of the anointing of Jesus Remember the the burger structure it is to show that as the saying goes man proposes but God disposes okay we are done um with the examination of uh Matthew 26: 1-6 before I conclude with the application points from these verses let me share with you my one other thought from this portion of scripture with the hope that we can better understanding with better understand God's nature and the way he does things and for this I bring you back to the hypothetical situation I POS
00:44:27 at the start of the sermon that is to imagine that instead of the vice Chancellor imagine that it was one of the cleaning ladies who was asked to confer the degrees to the students last June this is exactly what happened in our text on the account of the anointing of Jesus in the Old Testament we have Moses and and Samuel and Elijah doing the anointing on on Aaron and David and Elisha respectively the ones doing the anointing had impeccable spiritual credentials but here in our text we have a woman a person with no standing for
00:45:07 women in those days had no status she was a lonely individual whose name we don't even know but yet he was the one doing the anointing obviously no person on Earth man or woman pass or present has the qualifications to anoint Jesus who is God but why this unnamed unassuming woman I believe the purpose is to illustrate the upside down nature of God's economy the ways of God are often counterintuitive often contrary to our thinking or expectations but that is his nature that we have to understand and
00:45:54 appreciate for example let's survey some of what Jesus said Matthew 2016 the last will be first and the first will be last or Matthew 10:39 if you cling onto your life you will lose it but if you give it up for me you will find it or Luke 6 27:28 do good to those who hate you bless those who curse you everything is upside down often it goes against the the grains of logic you have to think deeply in order to Gras its meaning but within the upside down world of God's nature or ways the one that is
00:46:36 hardest to Fathom is this that a perfect man had to die for imperfect people so that imperfect people can stand perfect before God that a sinless man had to die for Sinners so that Sinners can become sinless before God and that is the mystery of the Gospel in our text to have an unnamed lonly woman anointing Jesus the son of God Is So counterintuitive and so is the death of Jesus on the cross it appears to me that the text is pointing us to that mystery that we Sinners who are supposed to be condemned
00:47:21 can now have life Jesus died so that we might live let's conclude the sermon with some application Point what are some practical lessons that can be glean from our text now in order that the word of God can have a concentral impact uh on us I shall leave it with only one take away from this account of the anointing of Jesus just one big lesson to boost the conduct of our faith let's revisit the value of the 30 silver coins and the and the perfume in the narrative now you see a sum of money may have a Define value 100 ring is 100 ring
00:48:01 you can count it its value may be fixed but its perceived value is different for different people 100 ring to a starving beggar is not the same as it is to a millionaire so along this line of thinking I cannot help but to begin to compare the two things of value in the Tex the B of 30 coins the silver coins versus the alabaster jaar not oil the former is worth 3,600 ring as we saw earlier but to the Jewish leaders who occupied positions of power and wealth it was loose change what they offered Judas was
00:48:39 nothing to them and because of who they were the value of the silver coins was greatly diminished not that they had great value in the first place now in contrast I cannot help but Marvel at the fact that the perfume belong to a woman and not a man and not to a man of great financial means generally woman in those days didn't work and had no income they were dependent financially on on the husbands she must have saved whatever little she could over many many years in order to own this this jar of knut
00:49:15 oil as such I I I think she's not a she's not a young woman the perfume was worth 36,000 ring as we saw earlier 10 times the the face value of the silver coins but in the light of who the owner was it was worth a whole lot more because of who she was the value of the perfume was greatly enhanced and she brought it to Jesus she brought something possibly the only thing she had that was of immense value to her the question is what will you bring to Jesus what will you bring to Jesus the meaning of the text may be clearer
00:49:59 clearer to us now after what we have discussed but this this question is like jumping at us from the verses demanding to be answered is the elephant in the room question what will you bring to Jesus will it be loose change or something of Great Value yeah I don't mean the the money you put in the box at the back h i don't mean the the typ you send via bt76 don't get me wrong I'm not talking about money I mean something from your heart what will you bring Jesus from your heart well it depends it depends on how
00:50:38 important Jesus is to you what we give as a gift to someone depends on who the someone is to us the more important he is to us the more we are willing to give this is obvious so the question really is how important is Jesus to you you see the King sitting on the throne of your life or have you relegated him to a corner of your life someone once said that in the hearts of many Christians God is not the president but just a resident the woman in our text recognized Jesus unsurpassed value and in response she brought something of
00:51:18 great worth the content of the alabaster jar is an expression of her deep devotion lavish love and high worship of Jesus and what she did is an example for us to follow it's a mstone in our journey of faith that we must strive to achieve may this portion of scripture cause us to examine ourselves over the course of the next few days or weeks may we seriously reflect on these questions what will I bring to Jesus from my heart how important Jesus is to me after all that he has done for me shall we close in
00:51:56 prayer Our Father in Heaven you are more than worthy of our devotion love and worship for you are the almighty God Our Redeemer and Lord as we draw closer to you may we approach you with a posture that is unreserved wholehearted and total even if if we bring you our metaphorical alabaster jar of expensive perfume it will still be less than what you deserve nonetheless caes step by step to honor you more and more with every fiber of our being our life and our heart for we for we pray this in the name of your
00:52:39 precious son amen there is our rise response to the god with this song that is best job [Music] son all I have world I break it and your Fe lord it's less than you deserve you're far more beautiful more precious D the all the sum of my my desires and the fullness of my joy like you still your blood I SP my heart as offering to my [Music] king here I [Applause] am take me as an all the [Music] ring here I am G every heart be For Your Glory [Music] take this time that I I have left it's all I have
00:55:01 for I made it at your feet long is less than you deserve and I the strength and my days are few you gave your life for me so I will live my life for you I you sp your blood I spill my heart as an offering to my king here I am take me as an offering here I am Ging every heartbeat For Your Glory here I am take me as an all for here I am ging every heart beat for your glor take me [Music] take worthy worthy you are worthy Worthy is the Lord [Music] worthy worthy you are worthy wory is the Lord worthy
00:57:13 worthy you are worthy Worthy is the Lord worthy worth you are worthy Worthy is the Lord here I Amy wory [Music] take [Music] all here I you are wor every heart For Your Glory here I am take me as an all here I am me every heart beat for your [Music] Glory take [Music] me take me take for your glory take me take [Music] [Music] me as we close the today's worship service please remain standing for the benediction people of God receive now blessings from the Lord may the Lord bless you and keep you
00:59:25 and turn his face towards you may he always also lead you and guide you so that your steps are firm and sure may he also nurture you and teach you to live a life that honors him and may he always immerse you in his joy that bubbles up from deep within you now go in the Peace of the Lord amen the service is over please do stay back and join us for a cup of coffee I'll see you next Sunday
