Worthy of Worship

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, welcome to our worship service. It’s good to see you all here celebrating the Lord this day.

I have just a few announcements to highlight from your bulletins this morning. The men’s group will be meeting tonight at 6:30. All men are invited to attend.

I’ll remind you that we’re collecting hygiene items for Operation: Christmas child for the month of March. Our goal this year is to send 200 shoeboxes. You can leave your items in the classroom beside the church office, and we’ll make sure they get to where they need to go.

Today is the last day to order your Easter lily. You’ll see a form in your bulletin to fill out. Just place that in the offering plate if you’re interested.

Also, thank you for all of your gifts to our special love offering for a church family that we collected last month. I was able to hand over a very sizable check this week that will be a great help to that family. I’m never surprised but always amazed at the kindness and generosity of our congregation.

Jeskyka, do you have anything today?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father your promise is that were two or three are gathered, You are there in the midst. We welcome You among us today and celebrate the gift of life that You have given to each of us. We pray that you open our years so that we may hear Your voice. Open our minds that we may know Your leading and guidance. And open our hearts so that we may receive Your wonderful love.

Grant us the peace and joy of Your presence. Fill us with Your spirit and lead us in the way of righteousness for Your sake. We ask all of this in the name of Christ, Amen.

Sermon

A lot of Christians are currently observing a season known as Lent, which is a period of forty days set aside to prepare the heart and mind for glorifying Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Part of Lent involves giving up something you normally enjoy for those forty days, things like chocolate or coffee or your favorite TV show. Lent is mostly observed by Catholics and the Orthodox Church, but it can be observed by any believer. In fact, about 20 percent of Protestants like us say they observe Lent.

I am not one of those Protestants. You folks do not want to see me after forty days without coffee. But I love the idea of Lent, the preparation. Easter is the church’s holiest season, and during these weeks leading up to Easter, it’s important to kind of take stock of your life and make sure you’re approaching Easter Sunday in a way that honors Christ’s victory over the grave. And it’s just as important to take that Easter attitude and carry it with you every day throughout the year. The question we’re going to answer today is what that attitude should be.

God says we’re to go out in the world every day and love people, but what’s the attitude we should have behind that love?

We’re to have faith that God will provide for all of our needs, but what’s the attitude at the root of that faith?

We’re called to have hope, but what’s the attitude that fuels that hope?

The answer to all those questions is a single word — worship. That’s the constant attitude you should have as a Christian, and it’s especially what you need to be feeling at Easter. It’s a reverence and adoration and thankfulness for who Christ is and for what he means to your life.

The Bible’s filled with reasons why we should worship God and the many ways we should worship Him. But one of the clearest examples of worshipping Christ — both why we should worship him and why sometimes we don’t — is found in something that takes place not long before that first Easter Sunday. It’s a dinner celebration that Jesus attends, and that story is told in three of the gospels: Matthew, Mark, and John. Today we’re going to be reading John’s account of what takes place, and it’s found in John chapter 12, verses 1-8. Turn there with me now, and follow along:

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.

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.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.

Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

And this is the word of the Lord.

There’s a whole lot going on under the surface of these few verses, so we’re going to be looking at this text from the perspective of all the main characters.

But at the heart of this passage is worship, and how the people who gathered for this dinner either did or didn’t have that attitude of worship toward Christ.

What we find with a careful look at this first part of John 12 is that Jesus is not only deserving of our worship, he’s worthy of it. And he’s worthy of it in three different areas: Jesus is worthy of our worship for what he’s already done, for what he will do, and for what he’s doing right now. Let’s take a look at those one at a time.

First, let’s take a look at what Jesus has already done for the people in this story, because that’s actually the reason why this dinner is happening.

Jesus and his disciples have come from Jericho on their way to Jerusalem, and the gospel writers tell us that a kind of heaviness has come over him. There’s a seriousness to Jesus now, a determination, and it’s all because he knows what he’s going to face when he gets to Jerusalem. Jesus is going to face the cross.

But about two miles from the city there’s this happy little break when Jesus returns to the small town of Bethany. There’s a dinner party, and John makes certain in verses 1 and 2 to say that Lazarus is one of the people at this meal.

We know all about Lazarus, don’t we? Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha are friends of Jesus. Lazarus had gotten sick and died, and Jesus had raised him from the dead. John tells that story one chapter earlier in John 11. All of this had taken place in the town where Jesus and his disciples have returned, in Bethany, where Lazarus continues to live with his sisters.

John doesn’t say where in Bethany this dinner is held, but in both Matthew and Mark’s account of this story, they mention who’s hosting this party — it’s at the house of a man known as Simon the leper.

We don’t know anything about this man beyond what’s written about him here, but we can make some good assumptions. Leprosy in the Bible is used as kind of a catch-all word for a lot of different skin diseases, none of which were good. Lepers at that time were complete outcasts from society. They were the lowest of the low, and they faced rejection wherever they went. At best, they were left to be beggars who lived along the side of the road. Rabbis were forbidden to touch lepers because they were considered unclean. The disease was so bad that lepers were considered cursed by God.

So we can say with absolute certainty that Simon no longer has leprosy, can’t we? It would be impossible for a leper to throw a dinner party and have a crowd of people attend. But something like that is entirely possible for someone who’s been cured of leprosy, and scholars believe that’s exactly what we have here in John chapter 12. Simon had been cured by Jesus.

And so here we have two men, Simon and Lazarus, who’ve been blessed with a miracle by Jesus, and this party attended by their friends and families and Jesus and the disciples is being given to celebrate those miracles and to honor the one who had performed those miracles.

Verse 2 says that Martha serves this dinner — which makes complete sense, because Martha is just that sort of person. Martha’s always working, always doting, always keeping things moving.

My translation says “Martha served,” that verb being in the past tense. But the Greek word is written in a way that means a continuing act of serving. Once Martha starts overseeing the food being prepared and the decorations and the table, she never stops. We’ll get to why she does this in a little while, but the fact that Martha’s serving this dinner not in her own house but in Simon’s hints that Simon the leper is actually a member of Martha’s family — a cousin, or an uncle, or a nephew.

The guests are all probably men — that’s the custom of the time. The leaders of the village are probably there, along with Simon and Lazarus, the disciples, and Jesus, the guest of honor. It starts out as a small gathering, but it won’t end that way. Word’s going to get out to the people, and they’re all going to head to Simon’s house, hoping to get a glimpse of Jesus and Lazarus.

I want you to picture this scene in your minds — these men reclining at the table. Martha moving among them setting down platters of food, asking if anyone needed more wine, telling Jesus, “Eat, eat,” and giving him the best dishes. Evening sunshine coming through the windows. The women talking in the distance. The sound of laughter among the men, because how could there not be laughter?

Imagine John, who would write this story for us all these thousands of years later. Think of what’s going through his mind right now. He’s eating and talking to Jesus and Peter and James and Andrew and all the rest, but his eyes are constantly drawn to the man sitting beside Jesus, to Lazarus, to this man who was dead but it now sitting across from him eating. And Lazarus would be gazing at Jesus, who he hadn’t seen since that burial cloth had been taken from over his eyes.

And on the other side of Jesus sits the host, Simon himself, a man who was stricken with a disease that drove people away, but now at his healing people flock to him. Simon’s no longer cut off from his family and friends, he’s surrounded by them. In many ways, Simon’s been resurrected just as much as Lazarus. Jesus has given him his life back too. John has to be absolutely amazed. There sits a raised Lazarus and a healed leper, with Jesus sitting between two trophies of his glory.

These men are miracles, and what is the only proper response to a miracle? It’s to worship. It’s to gather together to honor and adore the one who saves, the miracle worker. That’s exactly what these people are doing in Bethany.

You do both your life and your Lord a great disservice whenever you discount the miracles that Jesus has done in your life, because he’s saved you every bit as much as he saved Simon and Lazarus.

There are many in this world who haven’t heard of Christ. There are many more who’ve heard of him but ignore him. There are millions, billions of people who will live and die and never see heaven because of the choices they’ve made, but you are not one of them. God has chosen you. He has drawn you to Himself. You, as sinful as you are, are precious in His eyes — what greater miracle could there be than that?

Jesus has saved you. Provided for you. Sustained you. He’s protected you in ways that you know and in ways you don’t know at all.

We just spent a few weeks talking about your record player and all those grooves you’re supposed to keep your needle out of. But let that needle find those grooves for a minute. Let your mind drift back to those worst moments of your life, to your hardest times, to those days and weeks and months when you didn’t think you were going to make it. But you have. You have made it, because of Christ. And if you’re still in those times you will make it, because Jesus is with you. Because the Lord is so near to you that He whispers.

Recalling those dark times in your life when Jesus sustained you and lifted you up are the seeds of your worship. That’s where worship begins — in what Jesus has done in your past.

But there’s more. Jesus is also worthy of worship because of what he will do for your future.

Skip down to verse 7. We’re going to get into much more detail about what Mary does and how Judas reacts in verses 3-6, but this argument that breaks out — and you can consider it an argument — is quickly shut down by Jesus when he says that Mary did this for the day of his burial.

Mary has no idea, of course, what exactly Jesus is talking about here. Neither do the disciples nor anyone else sitting at that table. But the anointing that Mary does by pouring this perfume on Jesus’s head and feet is exactly what people would do to embalm the dead, and that’s where Jesus’s thoughts would turn. Because again, he knows what’s coming. Jesus knows the amount of suffering these next days will bring. He knows what pain and what horrors he’s going to face. He knows his purpose, that he will be the ultimate sacrifice, and he knows that part of that ultimate sacrifice means being cut off from the Father.

But even if it was a short while — even if Jesus is only going to be separated from God for a few moments — imagine how difficult and frightening that would be. Because the son is eternal.

Before he was born into this world, Jesus was spirit alone — like God and like the Holy Spirit. And so for an eternity — for eternity — he and the father were one. There was never a time when Father and Son and Spirit were not together.

But there on the cross, Jesus would take on every sin of every believer past, present, and future, and a holy God cannot look upon sin. Jesus knew that separation from the Father would have to come.

I cannot imagine the fear that Jesus felt. The physical pain of the beatings, the crown of thorns, and the crucifixion would be horrible enough. But for Christ, to be cut off from God — to cry, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” would be a pain that’s almost unbearable. It’s no wonder the cross was on Jesus’s mind so much from the time he and his disciples left Jericho.

But as Jesus feels that ointment being poured out on his head, as he watched Mary wipe his feet with her own hair and smelled the beauty of that perfume all through the house, he looks at those gathered around that table — his disciples; his friends; these two men he’d healed and given new life; Martha coming with yet another platter of food. He hears the crowds of Jews coming to see him and to see Lazarus. And at that moment, Jesus has only one thought: all this pain, all this fear, all of the suffering from being cut off from the Father, it’s all worth it. It’s worth it for these people and for all the people who had come before. It’s worth it for all the untold millions who would come after. Including you.

It is so important to remember that Jesus was not forced to the cross. God did not make Christ do something that he didn’t want to do. In Gethsemane, Jesus prayed and said, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

“If there’s any other way for me to save them, Father, please show me. But if there’s no other way, I will do this. I will suffer this, because I love them.”

That’s why he can let Mary do what she does — because Jesus knows what’s about to happen to him. He’s saying to the people in Simon’s house, “Mary won’t be there to embalm me when I’m dead, even though I know you’d want to be. So I’m letting you do that right now, because the time of my death has already begun.”

Of the three ways that Jesus is worthy of our worship, what he will do for you is often the easiest to grasp. Because through Christ, death has been overcome. Through Christ, your place in heaven is secured. Through Christ, your victory is secured.

As Christians, we are a people of hope. You’ve been promised that this life has meaning, that what you do here counts forever, and that at your very last breath you’ll find a door that opens into paradise.

You’ve been promised that all those you have lost are not lost at all, because you know where they are. More than that, you know they’re waiting for you, and there’s coming a day when you will join them forever.

And in the meantime you’re being watched over by a loving God who watches over and protects your every step. You’re being guided by a loving Holy Spirit that every day is turning you more and more into the saint that God wants you to be.

And all of that — every single bit — is because of what Jesus has done and will do in your life. How can you not look forward to heaven, to your glorified body, to your eternal life in the new heaven as and new earth, to being in God’s presence, and not worship Christ?

So we’ve seen how Jesus is worthy of worship for the miracles that he’s performed in your past, and we’ve seen how Jesus is worthy of worship for all the things he will do for you when you trade this tired old world for heaven. There’s one area of your life left to talk about, and I saved it for last because it’s often the hardest to manage. Jesus is worthy of worship for what he’s doing in your life right now.

I know some of you can say, “Jesus is absolutely worthy of worship for what he’s doing in my life right now.” I know how he’s comforting you. I know how he’s raised you up from a dark place. I know how he’s healed you and provided for you, and I thank Jesus for that right alongside you.

But I also know that some of you are struggling to feel God’s love right now because you’re hurting. You feel alone. You’re worried God’s let you down.

Look at these people having this dinner in Bethany. If you dig a little deeper into this text, you’ll see things really aren’t all that great for some of the people gathered around this table.

Take Lazarus. God had paradise waiting when Lazarus died from his sickness. But then Jesus performs the greatest miracle aside from his own resurrection — he resurrects Lazarus. Great, right?

But can you imagine being pulled out of heaven and returned to earth? Trading paradise for a trash heap? And now, based on what John writes in verse 9, Lazarus can’t get any peace. He’s like a zoo animal. Everybody wants to come and look at him. Everybody’s got a question about what Lazarus saw, or where he went, or who he spoke to while he was dead.

And think about Simon, the man Jesus had healed from what was the worst and most feared disease of that time. A disease that carried its own death sentence. Simon’s been reunited with his family and friends. He has his own life back. But even after being healed, even after being given this new life, nobody calls him Simon the healed or Simon the blessed, he’s still known as Simon the leper. It’s almost like nobody will let this poor man forget about his past, even when his future is now so bright.

But they still worship, don’t they? Simon worships Christ by offering his house to host a dinner for his Lord. Lazarus worships Christ by keeping near to the Lord who raised him. Martha worships Christ by her constant attention to whatever he may want instead of assigning all those duties to the servants.

And then there’s sweet Mary, and her act of undying love. Mary looks around and sees all these people worshipping the Lord in the way they think best. What can she do? What can she give Jesus?

She could give him her one valuable possession, a pound of expensive perfume.

This perfume has to be Mary’s own. She wouldn’t have used Simon’s, and she wouldn’t have poured it all out if that perfume belonged to Martha and Lazarus as well. Many scholars think this flask of perfume was for Mary’s wedding night. It was supposed to be poured out onto the bed of her and her new husband. Instead she pours it out here onto Christ, the one she loves like no other.

Both Matthew and Mark write that this expensive perfume is in an equally expensive alabaster flask. According to Mark, the only way this perfume can be used was if Mary breaks that flask. And so she does, pouring the contents onto the head of Jesus — that was the usual custom to honor a guest — but then in an act of love that goes beyond the usual means, Mary anoints the feet of her Lord as well, wiping them with her own hair as a sign of deep gratitude and reverence.

“To honor you in your life, my Lord,” she thinks.

“To honor me in my death,” Jesus says.

But now we come to verse 4, and to the man who objects to what Mary has just done.

In Matthew’s account of this story, all of the disciples are upset over what Mary does. Mark says it was only some of them. John puts the spotlight on the one who was most upset, and that’s Judas, the traitor.

John calls Judas a thief in verse 6. Judas is in charge of the the ministry’s small treasury, and evidently he’s been helping himself to a little of that money. John also says that Judas didn’t care one bit about the poor. That was the objection that he and the disciples had. It wasn’t that Mary was worshipping Christ, it was that she was worshipping Christ by breaking and using a flask of perfume worth more than a year’s wages. How much could that perfume have helped the poor?

We’re hard on Judas, and rightly so. But sometimes we’re hard on people because when we look at them we see so many of our own shortcomings. If we take a step back for a minute, we see that the question Judas asks is actually a really good one — “Why couldn’t we have sold this perfume and used the money to help the poor?” That’s a great question, especially since so much of the focus of Jesus’s ministry was always to the poor and the forgotten and the disadvantaged.

We have the advantage of hindsight here. We understand why Jesus replies to Judas in verse 7 the way that he does. He’s about to be crucified. But put yourself in Judas’s shoes. You don’t know what’s about to happen. All you know is that Jesus has spent three years seeking out and helping the poor. And now when this amazing opportunity comes to provide for the poor in a huge way, Jesus says, “Leave her alone, Judas. There will always be poor people.”

What would you think about that if you were Judas?

The Bible doesn’t tell us what Judas thinks, but Matthew tells us what Judas does. In Matthew, Judas goes to the chief priests right after this party and offers to betray Jesus. The devil’s been working on Judas well before this time, but what Mary does and what Jesus allows is the final straw. You can say that Judas betrayed Jesus out of greed. But at the heart of it, Judas turns away from Jesus because he doesn’t understand what Jesus is doing — not in the past, not in the future, but especially right now, in this moment.

And if you’re not careful, that’s exactly what can happen to you.

We should worship Jesus for the thing’s he’s done, because then we remember, and remembering what he’s yesterday will strengthen our faith in what he’ll do tomorrow, because God never changes. And we should worship Jesus for what he will do because that is our promise and our hope. That’s how we can endure.

But both of those things, as powerful as they are, are not nearly as powerful as worshipping Jesus for what he’s doing right now in your life, regardless of whether it’s a time of plenty or a time of want. Because today, this moment, is what matters most.

We just finished a series on having a Christian mind. So much of that Christian mind depends on understanding how important today, this day, the present, is. So often you’re either so trapped in the past or worried about the future that you miss out on the blessing of today — seeing how God is working in you today, how God is blessing you today. And our example to follow in this story is Jesus himself.

Jesus could have avoided this dinner altogether. It was a risk going back to Bethany. Just one chapter before, in John 11, Jesus raised Lazarus, but then he and his disciples had to leave and go to Ephraim because the chief priests wanted him dead. But Jesus refused to let the past keep hold of him at the expense of the present. To him, the past wasn’t holy. How can something that’s gone, that can’t be enjoyed again, be holy?

His eyes were on the cross and the sufferings he would endure, but Jesus wouldn’t let the pain of the future rob him of joy of the present. “Let tomorrow take care of itself,” he said, “Today, I’m going to laugh and eat and be with my friends.” To him, the future wasn’t holy either. How can something that hasn’t happened yet, something that isn’t real yet, be holy?

No, Jesus understood the secret of true worship, and the secret of true worship is that the holiest moment in your life is the one you’re living right now. Today is holy, because what you do today helps make yesterday disappear even more and helps make your future even better.

Today is the gift God has given you, and what is the best way to honor that gift? How do we learn to see God moving in your life right now?

You have to do exactly what Mary does. You hav to break your flask.

What do I mean by that? It means giving Jesus everything. All those concerns you have, all those precious things you have, all the life you have. It means thanking him for another day of living even when you’d rather be dead. It means to search for him with all your heart and mind and then find him, and with him find all of the blessings he’s given you, and then to say, “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, and now I’m going to give all of this back to you for your safe keeping.”

It’s to lean on him when you don’t understand him and when you doubt. And it’s okay to doubt. You can absolutely worship Christ in your doubt. Doubt isn’t a sin, it’s actually a necessary part of faith. But you have to be careful about what kind of doubt that is, and it all depends on how you consider the fact that God’s ways are not your ways, and His thoughts aren’t your thoughts.

I am all but certain that all the disciples doubted what Jesus said in verse 7 when they first heard it. The only difference was that Judas thought, “I don’t understand what you’re doing, Lord, and maybe I never will, and so I’m going to question you,” and the rest of the disciples thought, “I don’t understand what you’re doing, Lord, and maybe I never will, but I’m going to trust you anyway because I know who you are.”

That’s breaking your flask. It’s knowing what Christ has done in your life. It’s believing what Christ will do. Those two put together give you every reason in the world to believe that he’s also doing something in your life right now, something incredible. So watch for it. Look for it. Don’t be like Judas and turn away because you don’t understand. Be like Mary, break your flask, and worship Christ out of a trust that he will sustain you, he will comfort you, and he will raise you up. Because he is worthy.

The holiest moment in your life is the one you’re living right now. So live like it is. Believe like it is. That’s your attitude of worship. And whatever Christ is doing in your life right now, friends, no matter what it is or what it looks like, is worthy of worship.

Let’s pray:

Father we are constantly amazed at Your goodness and for the many blessings you pour out upon us every day. In this Easter season, bend our hearts even more toward you. Let us honor you in all that we do, all that we say, all that we think, all that we feel, and lift up our hearts to see the wonder and the power of your victory over the grave. Be with us now as we leave this place. Let us go forth in victory and in truth, knowing that you have overcome, and so through you, we overcome as well. For we ask this in Jesus’s name, Amen.