Mark 14: Anointing at Bethany

Generosity and Remembering our Story

Welcome: Brian Hayes, Area Director with YL and I get the privilege to serve as an Elder here. Invite us to watch this video from the Bible Project.

Bible Project Video- Generosity

Big Picture

Mark- Powerful Son of God & Suffering Servant of the Lord

Chapter 11 Jesus rides into Jerusalem as King. CH 12 & 13 Jesus teaches at the Temple on the corruption of Israel and it’s looming destruction. This naturally leads us to 14 where the plot to kill Jesus in secret is finalized and he is betrayed.

Important to note, this is marks last break. Mark uses Immediately 41 times 70% in NT. Mark’s Gospel is thrusting us forward to the Cross and Resurrection. Here is the last stop before he is betrayed.

Story :Read through Mark in 1 sitting, read it out loud. 3 hours. Immediately used

In between this tension boiling about Jesus and his betrayal, Mark includes this story about a woman’s Generous offering. So Generous that it is misunderstood and turned against her!

Mark 14:1-11

Mark 14 vs 1-2

Passover and Feast of unleavened bread

Big pictures help us understand story, themes, and background.

Question to ask: What is passover?

Question to ask: Why is there a festival about Bread with no yeast in it?

Israel had to trust God’s provisional nature without knowing who he was. The exodus is a story about trust, provision, and revelation.

Trust because they had to believe that God could actually free them

Provision because they had no way of sustaining themselves in the wilderness (a few day trip turned into a 40 year sojourning because of a lack of trust in God’s provisions)

Revelation because it is on Mt. Sinai that God reveals his character nature and draws up his covenant with Israel (which they fail miserably at, over and over and over…I.E another captivity in Babylon and Exodus back to rebuild Jerusalem…then Matt 13!)

A guy named moses who was a murder showed up claiming to be the authoritative voice and messenger of an unknown God

This was one of the largest Festivals where all Jews regathered in Jerusalem to remember and celebrate their Exodus (God’s Saving them through the Lambs blood and need to hurry without proper preparation of yeast)

They had to clear there whole fridge, cupboards, kitchen, everything that contained yeast. That was a lot of their food.

Jesus’s death is in the middle of the Festival in which Israel (and humanity) were to celebrate God’s freeing them from slavery, the powers of evil, leading them into freedom, creating a covenant, and providing means for sacrificial holiness into their Promise L and (an Eden like land of blessing and abundance)

THIS IS A BIG DEAL! The Chief Priests and Teachers of the Law don’t want to mess this up, because the people coming are the people Jesus has been healing and ministering to.

“Not during the Feast”

Tension of Jesus’s Betrayal

Mark 14:vs 2 Plot is formed between spiritual authority of Israel and Judas.

Jesus anointed Mark 14 Vs 3 Bethany was Jesus place of retreat so not to be in Jerusalem.

As Mark says, the son of God couldn’t even go into his own city for too long because of his looming death. Think about that.

An Unwelcomed God.-Is our response as the church, in understanding what Jesus has done for us, a generosity of welcoming in God to our lives and times?

Simon the Leper, a woman comes in (Mary)-sister of Martha and Lazarus

Simon the Leper probably healed by Jesus, a woman comes in (Mary)-sister of Martha and Lazarusat Jesus’s feet. What a cool way to be remembered!

Very Expensive perfume

words fumble over themselves at how expensive this is. A year’s wage worth.

She Broke it and poured the whole perfume on his head.

People are furious! Indignant! Not just Judas, lots of people there are absolutely floored at the waste of this action.

It could have been sold! It could have been used for supporting Jesus’s ministry! It could have been used as a gift offering to gain Jesus support of the people

Do you see the danger of these statements? The danger is that they are completely rational thoughts. Mark shows us the danger of not seeking Jesus before we react to what is happening around us.

That is one of the danger of wielding God and his gifts as a commodity for gain rather than a blessing to be embraced in alignment with God’s will

concern for the poor was customary at passover, like Christmas gift giving

A. Betrayal and Blessing (14:1–11) Quote

”The more we love Jesus, the more we will show it by what we offer to him.”

Story of Generosity

YL Leader JR paying for me to go to camp, Nick Zaconne and his Friend Sam

Jesus in Vs 6-9

She has done a beautiful thing

“The poor you will always have”- Jesus isn’t brushing off the poor.

Jesus is quoting Dt 15 which gets wrapped into a theme and quoted in the pronouncement of the Year of Jubilee.

Theme: Be generous to each other as God has been generous to you

Vs 8-10

This was done for Jesus’s Burial, he would walk to his death smelling the scent of a royal funeral.

Her name would live on because of her act of Generosity!

The Gospel according to Mark (The Sacrifice of Faith (14:1–11))

In Jesus’ sight an act has value according to its motive and intent, and that—not its material value—is what makes it serviceable in the kingdom of God.

This act prompts Judas to betray

I love in the video, they talk about living into a world of scarcity rather than embracing God’s generosity which results in us using God gifts as commodities rather than blessings and hurting others.

“Generosity doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does have to be radical”

The Cross wasn’t expensive in a lot of ways.

PREACH THE FREAKING GOSPEL BRIAN

It was Radical for God to step into our place. The great exchange!

2 Cor 5:21 “21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

God’s righteousness was exchanged for our brokenness through Jesus’s Generous and Radical expression of Love for us on the Cross.

Jesus’s blood was our passover lamb and his resurrection our entrance into God’s promises of true life. Our exodus is rooted in the cross.

It doesn’t make sense that Christ would be crowed King through suffering on our behalf but he did. Because he see’s in you the possibility of his renewed creation through his creative work and redeeming power!

Do you even see yourself the way Jesus has loved you! or are you too busy thinking of all the ways God’s “gifts” could have been used differently like Judas. It is a dangerous slope.

Story: Barrett and his blow out Sin and Redeption

Conclusion

We often talk about God’s generosity in money and wordly possessions, houses, 401k’s, jobs, stocks, family wealth, the country we live in, education and success. That is all great and possibly true, but worldly blessing isn’t always God’s blessing.

The Gospel of Mark was recorded because the story of Jesus, The Christ, The Son of God, the Fullness of Redemption, the Great Restorer, was so that you would come to know Jesus his Generosity of Redemption and restoration.

This woman’s story is forever recorded because She saw Jesus for who he was. The Son of Man, God in human flesh, come to pay for her sins. It moved her to respond.

What is your response? Have you ever responded or is your coming to this building cultural or for your family?

“Take the World but give me Jesus”

Take the world, but give me Jesus; In His cross my trust shall be, Till, with clearer, brighter vision, Face to face my Lord I see.