Sermon Tone Analysis

God, I know You give grace to the humble so I ask you, God, to do a deep work in my heart and break me.

Break me of my pride.

Break me in my selfishness.

Break me of anything that keeps me from knowing You, as hard as it is to ask God, do whatever it takes to break me.

If you were with us last week, actually, I said at the beginning of the message that I believe for many of you, one of the three prayers that we're praying will have a significant impact.

In fact, last week, I explained that for some of you, one of these messages might become, what I call, an anchor message.

In fact, as I look back over my relationship with God over all the years, there are three or four messages that I actually heard and experienced when someone else is preaching, that really had such a deep spiritual impact on my life that I was significantly different after being in the presence of God, hearing His word.

I call those anchor messages.

I can remember the moment, I can remember the time, I can remember the message, I was transformed in those messages.

Today though is going to be the most difficult.

If there is one that is by far the most dangerous of all three, it is the prayer we're going to talk about this week.

I want to warn you and just tell you upfront, some of you will not like this prayer.

Many of you will refuse to pray it.

I'm simply not going to pray this prayer.

I'll tell you upfront, it's not a common prayer.

It doesn't feel good.

This prayer is not consistent with the, “God will always make your life better,” version of Christianity.

This prayer though, it does have the potential to open your heart up to the work of God in such a way that it can forever change your life.

The prayer that I'm going to ask you to consider praying is the prayer Break Me.

Break Me, God.

Break Me.

I want to ask you to consider praying a very dangerous prayer.

Not all of you will.

You don't have to.

This isn’t like you have to pray this, but to consider giving God permission to do a deep work in your life, God, break me.

To study this today, what we're going to do is we’re going to look at two different stories in the Bible which is really cool as they're both side by side.

They're in the very same chapter in the book of Mark.

There's one story immediately followed by another story.

The first story deals with a prostitute…Let us try to get into the mind of what it would have been like for this woman because nobody in the first century wanted to be a prostitute.

One like, “Hey, hopefully by the time I'm twenty-one, I'll be in the top 10% of prostitutes in the community.”

Nobody wanted to do this.

In fact, if you were a prostitute, it’s only because life dealt you cards that you felt had no other way to play except for this desperate plea, because they were hated, despised, they were full of shame.

Who knows what would have led this woman to this.

Maybe she was a single mom and had no other way of paying for the bills.

Maybe she had been abused by men, knew nothing else.

Whatever it was, she was hated by every woman and used by many men, full of shame.

One day, she met a man that treated her differently.

Maybe for the first time from a male, she was shown honor, she was shown respect, he treated her with dignity, and he loved her appropriately.

It so transformed this woman that she wanted to worship Him in the most sacrificial way that she could imagine.

Her extravagant act of worship completely confused everyone else in this story.

s ays this and it's interesting to me, “While Jesus was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman,” and this is the sinful woman that we know from Luke's Gospel, this is the simple woman comes in, “With an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume.”

Now, first thing I want you to know, whose home was Jesus sent?

He was in the home of Simon the Leper.

Everyone else would run from lepers.

Jesus would befriend them and healed them.

That’s pretty cool.

You got a Rabbi Jesus.

This sounds like a joke.

You've got a Rabbi, a leper, a prostitute in this house along with some other disciples.

She comes in with very expensive perfume.

Now, before I go on, I want to explain that perfume to you.

This perfume was so valuable, we find out later in the Gospels that it was valued at like a year's worth of wages.

Just imagine what you make in a year and imagine it being that valuable.

Why was it so valuable?

It’s valuable because it was incredibly rare, really difficult to come by.

Ordinary women did not wear perfume because they could not afford it.

Who wore perfume?

Basically, it was like the calling card.

You invested your money into the perfume so when you're walking by and some guy was, “Oh, I see,” you're sending me a message that you're available.

This was very, very expensive, what a year's worth of wages.

It was essentially the marketing tool to draw business.

She's got this incredibly expensive perfume and in the next part of the verse says this, “She did what with the jar?” Let's all say aloud.

She broke the jar.

Everybody say it again.

What does she do?

She broke the jar and then what does she do?

She poured the perfume on Jesus' head.

She broke and pour.

She broke and pour.

Say it with me.

What did she do?

She broke and she poured.

Now, some people, as we read on the story, freaked out.

Don’t do that.

Stop.

You imagine it in slow motion.

I'm diving on it.

It’s so valuable.

This act of worship was more extravagant than you can imagine.

Essentially, she was saying, “I'm giving you my whole life.

I'm giving you the most valuable possession I have.

This represents my past and this represents my future.

In other words, I'm leaving my past life behind.

I'm giving my future source of income and my life savings away.

Jesus, you have loved me so that I will break open the most valuable possession that I have, what represents my livelihood, I will break it and I will pour it, all of it, pour it out in one selfless extravagant moment of worship.”

Broken and pour it.

Broken and pour it.

That’s the first story.

The second story is right after the first story in the same book of the Bible.

In this story, Jesus is having His last meal.

He’s gathered together with His closest friends.

He knows what is coming that He's going to give His life on the cross.

This is how Mark tells the story.

Same chapter verse , “As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it.”

Then, what did He do?

Say it aloud, , then, what did He do? “Then, He broke it into pieces and gave it to His disciples, saying, take it, for this is my body.

And He took a cup of wine and He gave thanks to God for it, and He gave it to them and they all drank from it.

And he said to them, this is my blood which confirms the covenant between God and His people.”

He said, it is, what?

Everybody, you want all the need to say it aloud.