4 Beautiful Things

Has anyone ever done something for you which you would describe as a beautiful thing?

Have you ever had a friend step up and do something, maybe that you didn't expect, sacrificially blessing you?

Sometimes it's a person turning up and giving you a meal, or maybe it's an envelope with some money just when you need it.

I think many of us can appreciate that we, every now and then, experience something that we might call a beautiful thing.

In today's passage, we've jumped over from the beginning of Mark to chapter 14 as we move in towards Mark's retelling of the Gospel and towards the Passion Week of our Lord Jesus heading to the cross.

And this portion of text is a wonderful passage.

Does anyone feel that?

For me, it's always just held such a special place in my heart, this portion of Scripture.

Jesus refers to the actions of an unnamed woman as a beautiful thing.

And I want to suggest that there are four beautiful things in this passage, not just one.

And I think we can learn from these and put them into practice.

And I think they honor Jesus and actually bring him gladness.

So Cedric read for us verse 1 of chapter 14.

The Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away.

The chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him.

But not during the festival, they said, or the people may riot.

The first thought I want to suggest about what is beautiful to the Lord is remembering God's faithfulness.

Remembering God's faithfulness is a beautiful thing, and that's what the Festival of Passover is all about, isn't it?

It's about remembering a very long time ago when the people of Israel were in slavery to Egypt and they called upon God for mercy and he heard them.

And he sent, ultimately, an angel of death to kill the firstborn in judgment of Egypt, and yet he spared his people when they covered the doorpost of their houses with the blood of an unblemished lamb.

This is what Passover remembers.

Yahweh, Israel's God, rescued them and then led them out of Egypt around the Sinai Peninsula and to the edge of the Red Sea, and he opened up the Red Sea so that they could escape.

For centuries, the people of Israel have been celebrating this, the Feast of Passover, and it happened at the beginning of spring, spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

It's a symbolic remembrance of God's creating new life, isn't it?

Have you found in your life, it's always a beautiful thing to remember God's faithfulness?

It is.

It's absolutely essential for us all.

Israel were judged in about the 6th century BC because they stopped remembering his faithfulness.

Here once again, it's Passover, festival.

It's a time to remember God, the faithful one, God, the merciful one.

And very sadly, we're told the chief priests and the teachers of the law are not doing that so much as doing something quite horrible, scheming to arrest the Messiah, scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him.

Remembering God's faithfulness is both a beautiful thing and a crucial thing.

When I was a young Christian, young adult, I remember a pastor saying to me, suggesting that I choose to create a reservoir in my heart and my mind of God's faithfulness to me.

He said, you can base all of your trust in the Lord on what you read in the Bible, and that's a wonderful thing.

You can read biographies and autobiographies about people who have seen God act in amazing ways, faithful, trustworthy ways.

But there's nothing like actually deciding that you would anticipate yourself and believe for and pre-frame my expectations that my God would act in my history.

And that I would write them down.

I would lay them down in my memories as part of my testimony.

Because if you don't do that, you don't have a testimony, do you?

Josie has remembered when God has acted in her life, that Rice Conference, she remembers.

The faithfulness of God is meant to be passed down from generation to generation.

Amen.

It is so important that we remember the times in our life and in the life of others when he miraculously provided money, when he miraculously healed us, he gave us deliverance, he gave us relational restoration, when he changed people's hearts.

Do you remember when that person you prayed for, for years, came to know the Lord?

Someone nodded me.

Praise the Lord, hey?

But you don't forget that stuff.

We need to be good at remembering the faithfulness of our God.

So can I encourage you to start collecting, start collecting those memories for your reservoir of belief and memory.

It's a beautiful thing to remember the faithfulness of God.

And it's a beautiful thing to realise God's presence in your present.

Realising God's presence in the present, certainly what this unnamed woman did.

While he was in Bethany, I'm just reading from verse 3, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume made of pure nard.

She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, why this waste of perfume?

It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor.

And they rebuked her harshly.

Leave her alone, said Jesus.

Why are you bothering her?

She has done a beautiful thing to me.

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them anytime you want, but you will not always have me.

The unnamed woman certainly realized God's presence in her present.

She's the only one who treated Jesus the way he deserved to be treated.

But there's some really interesting stuff I want to just unpack a little bit from the background of this dinner before we get to what the woman did.

It's the time of Passover in April in the Northern Hemisphere, as I said, and Passover festival is when Jerusalem swells enormously.

There might be 80,000 to 100,000 people think in history, looking back, typically in Jerusalem, but at Passover, it swells to, say, 350,000.

So every home becomes an Airbnb.

It's fully required of you to open up your home to let the pilgrims come and celebrate Passover.

But if you go back a few months back before April, before this is all happening, back in November, December, and it's the Feast of Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication, the celebration of the time in about the 5th century BC when the second temple was finished and dedicated.

So the people of Israel celebrated the Feast of Dedication back in winter, which is November, December for the Northern Hemisphere.

So I want to take you to John 10, verse 22.

Verse 22.

Then came the festival of dedication at Jerusalem.

It was winter and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon's Colonnade.

The Jews who were gathered around him were saying, How long will you keep us in suspense if you are the Messiah?

Tell us plainly.

So in December, Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem.

And then John 10, verse 40 says, Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptising in the early days.

There he stayed and many people came to him.

So this is December before the April.

So that's about as far.

When it says he went from Jerusalem to the Transjordan, that's basically Hornsby to Monovo.

So that's the sort of distance.

They travel a lot of ground on foot.

So it's a downhill journey off Jerusalem, down past Jericho on your left, and then out across the Jordan.

And so there he's over there.

And then we come to John 11, and it tells us a man named Lazarus was sick.

He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha.

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

And so when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed there another two more days and then said to his disciples, let us go back to Judea.

But Rabbi, they said a short while ago, the Jews were trying to stone you there, and yet you were going back.

So this is a very important point in the story of the Passion of Jesus when he's asked to go back to raise Lazarus or to heal him from the sickness.

He knows that Bethany is 3Ks away.

So we're working our metaphor.

It's in Wurundja.

So he is down safe in Monevale, and he hears that in Bethany, in Wurundja, 3Ks from Jerusalem, he needs to go for his friend Lazarus.

And so there's no question that he knows to go back to raise Lazarus means that he's going to lose his life.

And the disciples know this.

Even Thomas says to the rest of the disciples in verse 16, let us go that we may die with him.

So he's down at Monevale, safe, and yet he comes back to Jerusalem knowing that it will cost him his life.

He comes back and he raises Lazarus to life.

And then after this amazing miracle, John 11, 54 and following tells us, therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the people of Judea.

Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness to a village called Ephraim where he stayed with his disciples.

So he hung out throughout the winter at Chatswood.

Bethany is Orunga.

Chatswood is about where Ephraim is.

So in Hornsby, Jerusalem, the chief priests, they're looking for Jesus.

But he's hanging out at Chatswood.

And he's doing stuff.

He's doing amazing things still, but keeping a really low profile.

And then we come to Chapter 12 of John's Gospel, six days before the Passover.

Jesus came to Bethany, back to Orunga, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honour.

Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.

Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume.

She poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was slated to betray him, objected, Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?

It was worth a year's wages.

Now, Mark's Gospel we just heard say that it was two days before Passover.

But it doesn't say when the meal happened.

Can you see this is most likely the same event?

It's most likely in Bethany, the same event just told through different eyes.

But significantly, Mark doesn't want us to know that it's Mary.

We just know the woman who anointed Jesus as an unnamed woman.

So Jesus has come from Ephraim back to Bethany, 3K is from Jerusalem.

He's moving resolutely towards the cross.

He is going to be executed by crucifixion and then buried.

And the only person who understands this, it would seem, by God's divine discernment given to her as a gift, is this unknown, unnamed woman in Mark 14.

Back in Chapter 14 of Mark's Gospel, this woman comes with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume and she breaks the jar and pours the perfume on his head.

And they say, why is this done?

Why this waste?

Waste is about cost and benefit, isn't it?

If we are down at Warunga, there are some nice restaurants down at Warunga, and you go and you pay top dollar for that meal, and then you taste the meal and you're like, that's yuck!

And you push it to the side of the table and you walk out of the restaurant.

That's a waste, that meal, because it's cost-benefit.

You paid an amount for it, but the benefit wasn't sufficient.

So it's quite awful, isn't it, to think that the disciples are saying, Jesus is not worth that perfume.

That's the definition of waste.

The benefit is not enough for the cost.

In the Old Testament, kings were anointed by priests before they were coronated, and the dead were anointed for burial.

Isn't it amazing that this unnamed woman, maybe Mary from John's Gospel, anoints him both to be king because his coronation is on Calvary, isn't it?

She's anointing him for his kingship, and she's also doing what you would do for those you love, anointing him for his burial.

See you next time.

To follow Christ, have you discovered, maybe, in your life?

To follow him wholeheartedly, some will say, it's a waste.

Some will say, why are you giving up so much?

Why are you giving up, maybe, prestige, power, safety, security to follow Christ's call on your life?

Some will say that it's a waste, but it won't be, will it?

Because Jesus is worth it, one of our core values.

Jesus is worth it.

The cross of Jesus seems like the greatest waste in history.

I mean, this guy said he was God, and he was the saviour of the world, and he gets killed.

I mean, right at the core of the Gospel message is this idea of waste, a perceived idea of waste, yet it's not how things truly are.

The woman anointed him for kingship and for burial, and she did a beautiful thing.

And I think one of the things you've got to pick up about the beauty of her action is she just realised God was present with her right in that moment.

Amen.

Don't you think this is so much part of life, having eyes of faith to see the fingerprints of God when he's right there with you?

It's important to think back and see his actions in the past.

Remember his faithfulness.

You've got to see him in the present.

Amen.

That's a beautiful thing.

It's like it pleases the father when he's seen, when the spirit is seen and noticed.

I think it's one of the great challenges we have, to see God at work in the present.

But the woman does.

And the third beautiful thing is releasing my all for his all.

Jesus said she did what she could.

She poured perfume on my body to prepare my body for burial.

Truly, I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

Isn't that a big call?

Wherever the gospel is preached, this idea, this narrative, this picture of what the woman has done will be told.

I think it's more like art than sort of science.

Because I think some of us want to say, if she poured out a year's wages, does that mean I have to give a year's wages?

Like how much would it be exactly?

And you're trying to do the maths.

Let that go.

It's art.

It's art.

The picture is she gave everything.

What does that mean for me?

Right?

She gave everything.

In fact, Mark does this beautiful job of telling the story of the gospel calling us to give our all, releasing, surrendering our all for his all.

And he picks these two women at the end of his gospel, one who does the anointing with perfume and one who gives a few pennies, a few verses before.

We looked at it last week.

Two unknown women, the poor widow at the temple.

She gave two coins and she blew Jesus away.

Why?

Because she gave all that she had.

And then a few verses later in the story, we're told another woman gave all she had.

Two women, and yet the disciples are going to abandon Jesus.

They will not ask for his body, to bury the body.

Isn't that quite shocking?

They don't ask for his body.

They're scared.

They will not anoint him for burial.

Well, but two unknown women give everything in response to the mercy of God.

I think that is a beautiful thing, isn't it?

It's a beautiful thing because it tells us that God sees what you are doing in response to his grace.

As obscure as life feels, you are never obscure if it's for the glory of Jesus.

Amen.

If you are giving your all for his all, he sees it.

And it's not actually compared with anyone else.

Two pennies and maybe an inheritance.

And Jesus remembers it.

And he says, this is the essence of the gospel.

She did what she could to prepare me for what I have to go through.

It's amazing and really sad that this is the only act of love given to Jesus in his Passion Week.

No one else demonstrates care like this woman.

So for us to live out our lives in a way that pleases the Lord, in reflection on this message and sort of coming up with four parts to it, that all start with R and all the rest as a good Baptist preacher, I think I'll remember, it's actually really helpful to think, remember his faithfulness in the past.

Realise his presence in my present.

Release my all for his all.

So surrender to him who I'm in his presence, he's in my presence.

The Spirit of God is with me, I wanna walk with him.

Know the with God life.

Remember his faithfulness in the past.

Realise his presence in my presence, in my present.

Surrender, release my all for his all.

And that's actually how you resist the devil, the fourth beautiful thing.

Because there is a one who is anti the Lord back then and also in our lives.

James 4.7 says, resist the devil and he will flee from you.

And when we do this, I would put it to you, it's a beautiful thing.

And it's something worth just thinking about.

Next time you're tempted to do something, you know you shouldn't do.

Just remember, it's a beautiful thing when we say, yes Lord, your way, not my way.

Yes Lord, not the world, the flesh, the devil, your way, not that way.

Your will be done.

That's a beautiful thing.

It pleases the Father in heaven, amen?

Mark 10, Judas Iscariot, one of the 12, goes to the chief priest to betray Jesus.

They're delighted to hear this, and they promise to give him money, so he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

John's Gospel tells us that Judas is a thief and that he's after money and he did it for money, but Mark doesn't.

It's really interesting.

Mark doesn't say why Judas threw it all away.

And how easy is it for us to sit here and point the finger at you?

Oh, look at you, Judas.

And it's not hard to know, there's fingers pointing back at me, aren't there?

Like, we know more than Judas knew, and we still betray him.

He had 24-7 with the master, but we've got 2,000 years of history, and we've got the Holy Spirit living in us, those of us who are Christians, and we still choose betrayal often.

I think that's why Mark, in his wisdom, chose to not give any reason.

I think he's trying to, again, paint some art that would just hang there and say, I'm not telling you why he did it, but we've all got it in our humanity.

We've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Rather than remembering God's faithfulness at Passover, the chief priests are plotting to kill.

They needed to resist the devil, but they couldn't.

The Lord loves it when we obey him.

We don't have to choose to disobey, we can choose grace.

Isn't grace a wonderful thing?

It both fixes our past failures and empowers us to make the right choice in the future.

And often we focus too much on the backside.

Grace just is a backstop, we think.

Grace just helps me out when I fail.

It's always that.

But Paul writes to Titus, and it's just so important for discipleship, verse 11 of chapter two, the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions.

Did you hear that?

It teaches us to resist the devil.

It teaches grace is power.

It teaches us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age while we wait for Jesus to appear.

And he has redeemed for himself, for people from wickedness to purify us that we might want to do good all by grace.

Grace is there to empower us to resist the world, the flesh and the devil.

So in the midst of this shocking and dark journey, this dark day in human history where Jesus would hang on a cross to appease the wrath of God and take our sin upon himself and take the punishment God deemed fitting for sinful humanity.

He's about to do all of that.

In the midst of that, there are these hints of the beautiful, aren't there?

Remembering God's faithfulness is a beautiful thing.

Can I encourage you to do that?

Can I encourage you to daily consider the habit of saying, God, I might be getting busier and busier, but I'm not going to forget who you are and what you've done in my life.

I want to remember.

Because that's what Passover is.

And that's how they messed up.

They stopped remembering who God is and what he had done.

And realize God is with us.

Christianity is the with God life.

We are meant to walk with the Spirit.

He's always with us.

His fingerprints are always evident if you have eyes to see.

And it's a beautiful thing when you see him.

You go, oh, I see you.

You're here with me.

You're with me in this dark place.

Yes, he is.

And then out of that, we surrender.

We release and say, Lord, help me.

I want to give it all.

Have my life.

No longer I that lives, but Christ who lives in me.

That's the picture of the baptism.

Josie has gone.

She's died and she's come to new life in Christ, clothed in his righteousness.

Hallelujah.

My all for his all.

And out of that, we resist the devil.

Because there is that which wars against our soul, the desires of the flesh, the devil, the world.

But we can overcome because Jesus has overcome.

And none of it will be a waste.

Amen.

None of it will be a waste.

Can we stand together, please?

We're going to sing.

I just love to pray.

Lord, Holy Spirit, we commit our lives to you, to the glory of Jesus, and we want to confess that we can relate to Judas more than we want to think is the truth.

And we consider Peter the Rock, and we know he failed as well.

Lord Jesus, would you help us learn from these two courageous heart-passionate followers of you, the woman who anointed you, and also that poor widow who gave all she had.

And may we see those pictures and follow the line of sight that they take us.

They take us to you, Lord Jesus, God in human flesh on a cross, giving his all for us.

Lord, may today be a day where you realign many of your people.

Help us to remember, and see you, and release all to you, and resist for you.

In Jesus' name I pray, amen.

Amen.

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