Deceit & Devotion

Call to Worship

To all who are weary and in need of rest

To all who are mourning and longing for comfort

To all who fail and desire strength

To all who sin and need a Savior

We, Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, open wide our arms

With a welcome from Jesus Christ.

He is the ally to the guilty and failing

He is the comfort to those who are mourning

He is the joy of our hearts

And He is the friend of sinners

So Come, worship Him with us.

Scripture Reading & Reader

Scripture Reader, --

Mark 14:1–11 NIV

Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and 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.” While he was in Bethany, 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 any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my 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.” Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

Post-Scripture Prayer

Pray.

Body of Sermon

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, or as today shall be called, Brock Purdy Day! Thanks for having fun with us — if we are free in Christ, and we are, then the rest of the world should know it.

Open up your Bibles with me, if you haven’t already, to Mark 14. Today we’re going to be in verses 1-11, and we’re going to be looking at the beginning of the Passion narrative. Anytime we hear the word “Passion” — usually around Lent and Easter, it’s meant to point us to the suffering of Jesus, and we get the word “passion” from the Greek word for “suffering.”

Jesus has been on His way to Jerusalem where He will suffer and die, and in His suffering and death, He will be the sacrifice for all sins — for all time.

And maybe a good question to ask, would be… why? Why does Jesus have to die?

In his letter to the church in Corinth, a follower of Jesus named Paul, said, 1 Corinthians 15:3

1 Corinthians 15:3 (NIV)

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

So to ask the question of why Jesus died, is to be introduced into an entire Biblical backstory.

In Genesis 2:17 God said to humanity:

Genesis 2:17 (NIV)

but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Death is a result of our disobedience. The deceit of the serpent in the garden slithered its way in, and we didn’t take the words of God seriously.

Disobedience moved us out of the presence of God. Unholiness can’t be in the presence of holiness.

Outside of His domain is not a place of eternal life… we experience reality outside of what God had planned for us. Death becomes an inevitability… But God has a plan to deal with death.

Later in the Old Testament, God instructs His people to build a Tabernacle, a mobile house of worship, and we can think of the Tabernacle as a death-free zone. Nothing related to death is permitted inside the Tabernacle. So how do we, as dead people, enter into the Tabernacle?

If you read Leviticus 16-17, we see that God will accept a sacrifice, which is an in-the-place-of offering to God — something has to surrender its life for us. This is how the High Priest would enter into the Holy of Holies, the Inner Chamber, by taking the blood, or the life, of a blameless or spotless animal, and can get in. One scholar explains it like this, “The animal dies for the human, on behalf of the human, and in place of the human, allowing the person to live “through” death and reunite with God.” And the High Priest could only do this on behalf of all the people once a year — and He’d slip behind a curtain, a thick veil, to signify that He was again reunited with God.

Two things happen in all of this, we see that: there are real consequences for opposing God, but also that God has a plan to deal with it.

And for a long time this whole thing goes on and on and on… in the Tabernacle and in the Temple, but it doesn’t fix the problem. We can’t get to God without the help of something blameless dying in our place. We have to be alive, or have life, to get in!

God does deal with this… God joins us and does for us what we could not do. Jesus is God, who came to earth, to do as 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “though He had no sin — came to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” God will surrender His own life for us… He did not have to, did not need to, but still offers up His own life for us. And when Jesus does die, that thick curtain in the Holy of Holies is ripped in half, — God’s presence is no longer kept under lock and key, but it’s available for everyone who comes to God as a result of what Jesus has done.

We’ve said on several occasions that every part of Mark’s gospel is intentional. Jesus doesn’t die at the ingenious hands of men — He goes to the cross for us exactly the way God had drawn this together. Let’s look at Mark 14:1-2 and we’ll see this together.

Mark tells us that Jesus is in Jerusalem two days before two major feasts that happen in the Holy City, where some 80 to 300,000 people will show up… and Mark mentions that the religious leaders didn’t want to arrest Jesus and plan for His murder because they thought a violent mob would break out as a result.

I love what Mark is telling us. The death of Jesus is not in the hands of wicked men, it is the rescuing of all of humanity that is in God’s hands.

Mark 14:1-11 create a sandwich… The first piece is verses 1-2 and it’s the deceit of evil, that the death of Jesus was without purpose… and if you look at verses 10-11, we see the second piece, more deceit, where Judas has been roped into the plans of the religious leaders — a pawn in the death of Jesus.

I say the word “deceit” because it could only be an evil form of trickery to try and broke our devotion to Jesus.

Mark’s gospel doesn’t give a third option… you either succumb to deceit, that there’s something that could persuade you away from faithfulness to Jesus; or you are completely devoted to Him. Two options — that’s it, not another choice, and that’s what Mark shows us by making this sandwich of 2 verses at the front, 2 verses at the back — but 7 verses in the middle are about an unnamed woman’s devotion to Jesus.

The woman shows up while Jesus is eating at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany, a town outside of Jerusalem, about two miles away, and she takes a jar of expensive perfume. Verse 3 says it was made out of pure nard — and this is like a family heirloom, this is expensive, it’s valuable, it’s something you could sell and keep yourself afloat if you were under financial duress, — this is like this woman’s life savings, that she pours out on the head of Jesus.

And people at the dinner think this is a senseless act of frivolity.

There is nothing senseless, and nothing frivolous, about your completely committed devotion to Jesus.

This is the paradoxical nature of salvation… it is God’s free gift to us in Christ, but it’ll cost you everything you have.

This is the story of the Pearl of Great Price in Matthew 13, which says this: Matthew 13:45-46

Matthew 13:45–46 NIV

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

This woman isn’t making a bad choice like what the people at dinner are saying… She has made a value-based decision, staking her claim on the most important thing in her life, and showing us how devoted we have to be when Jesus — who is the one of Great Value — stands in contrast with everything else.

In verse 6, Jesus says, “Leave her alone…” He is pleased when we devote ourselves to Him.

I want to give you (3) elements of a devoted life, and I think these will help us to grow in devotion as we follow Jesus.

Look with me at verse 6… Mark 14:6

Mark 14:6 (NIV)

“Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.

If we want to live devoted lives, then we need actions that express our devotion to Jesus… the simple reason, being that, Jesus says these things are beautiful to Him. Beauty in this sense is like a “good work,” this is a noble task, this is praiseworthy, and in verse 8, Jesus says why. She was preparing His body for burial… His rebuke to the other people at dinner is along the lines of, “you’ve got all the time to serve those who are needy, but we don’t have a lot of time together now.” These feasts about to happen in Jerusalem included an offering to the poor, but this woman wanted only honor for Jesus.

This isn’t an excuse to forget the poor — in fact, this is probably the opposite of that. It’s an invitation to live a life of undivided devotion to Jesus.

It’s interesting, the Christian tradition, is an embodied tradition. We pray, lift hands, receive communion, anoint others, await a resurrection of our bodies, we say that the Holy Spirit lives in our bodies — Jesus is the embodiment of God. You could pray quietly to yourself, you could store up all sorts of Bible knowledge in your head — but what I think Jesus is hoping for is an embodied expression of what Jesus means to us.

We respond with our bodies.

This woman dumped her life savings on the head of Jesus.

You might kneel at the altar, you might put your hands up in worship, you might give more money, you might put it in your calendar so that you spend time expressing who you actually belong to. These actions bring honor to Jesus.

I want you to look at verse 8, for the second way in which we can live devoted lives to Jesus. Mark 14:8

Mark 14:8 (NIV)

She did what she could.

To live a devoted life, we must do what we can. This is an invitation to every person in the room, what can you do to bring honor or live a praiseworthy life that is dedicated to Jesus?

Jesus isn’t asking us to do things we cannot do, in devotion to Him. We are making the decision to show who He is, what He has done, and the magnitude of His life, death, burial, and resurrection to the rest of the world.

This week, in wondering what this could possibly mean for people in Lamorinda, I remembered the The Merton Prayer, a prayer by Thomas Merton, first published in 1956.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I love that line, “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.”

This is “doing what we can” in devotion to Jesus.

And maybe we’re stuck on this because we don’t think that God would use what we do in devotion to Him.

But a devoted life lives in confidence that He will use what we do.

This is what Jesus does for this woman in the passage, at the end of verse 8, “she pours perfume on His body to prepare Him for burial.”

God used what she did, and He will use what you do.

I don’t know what your gifts are…

Maybe it is the gift of prayer, and all you can offer at this stage of life is just commitment to praying… He’ll use it.

Maybe you have the gift of giving, and the real fear you live with, is that your wealth will outlive you,… Give generously, He’ll use it.

Maybe you have the gift of remembering names, and while it doesn’t feel like you have a lot, know that He will use your ability to never remember a face or a name. If that’s you, I’d invite you to stop on our patio in the morning and help greet people… because God will use your ability to help someone else feel valued and known in a world where everyone is anonymous and a little bit lonely.

This woman, who expresses her devotion to Jesus, does what she can, trusts that God will use it, is in the Bible for a reason. She is a model, a prime example, of what devotion to Jesus looks like. This is verse 9. Mark 14:9

Mark 14:9 NIV

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

Jesus will endure the cross, so that on the cross, Jesus will have reunited us back to God, to set us apart for Himself in devotion — and what we bring, is our whole selves, not more, not less, but doing what we can — trusting that He’ll make sense of it all. This has been the plan of God since the very beginning.

It would be deceit speaking, if we thought that nothing we did, nothing we offered, nothing that we are, would be acceptable to Him. Remember, there’s only two choices… Choose the way of devotion: make a choice to give Him the honor He deserves, use what He’s already given you, and trust that it’ll never go unnoticed.