Mark chapter 14 is where I ask you to turn in your Bibles this morning. Mark 14. Last week we finished chapter 13, which we commonly call the Olivet Discourse. And that's the longest section of teaching in the Gospel of Mark by Jesus or anyone else. But now, as we turn the page, we're entering the longest chapter in Mark. This has the most verses, this has the most words. So it's gonna take us a few weeks, in case you didn't already know. Spoiler alert, probably four or five sermons. There's a lot of action here. And as some have pointed out, a lot of the action as we get into this chapter isn't being done by Jesus, it's being done to Jesus. What do you mean by that? Well, there's a sense in which, as Jesus delivers himself into the hands of sinners, he is being acted upon. Mary anoints him. We'll see that today. The Sanhedrin arrests him. We'll see that in a couple weeks. Judas betrays him. We begin to see that in the section today. Peter denies him. And as Vermin and Geese said, every aspect of the plot occurs because he has delivered himself into the will of his father. It's still all under God's control. It's all going exactly according to his plan and his timing. but because he has delivered himself up to be crucified, others are now acting on him. Let's look at that together. Hopefully you found your place. Would you stand with me and I'm going to read Mark 14, verses one through 11. After two days, it was the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by trickery and put him to death. But they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar of the people. And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, he sat at table. As he sat at table, a woman having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard, and she broke the flask and poured it on his head. But there were some who were indignant among themselves and said, why was this fragrant oil wasted? For it might have been sold for more than 300 denarii, and given to the poor. And they criticized her sharply. But Jesus said, let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for me. For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish, you may do them good, but me you do not have always. She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint my body for burial. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the whole world, what this woman did will also be spoken of as a memorial to her. Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray him to them. So when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. So he sought how he might conveniently betray him. Let's pray together, please. Our Father, we rejoice that we can come to your word. And yet, this is a very sobering passage, and will become more so as we get further into this passion-weak narrative, as we get further into the betrayal, and the denial, and the unjust hearings, and ultimately your crucifixion. But Lord, we thank you that the story does not end there. We thank you that you have conquered death, that you are alive and in heaven with your Father today. Lord, we thank you for the promise of resurrection. We thank you for the hope that it offers us, for the eternal life that you have provided for us in Jesus. Lord, as we come to this section of your word today, we're asking for your help. I'm asking for your help. That you would give clarity of thought, clarity of word, because we want to hear from you. We want to see you in your word today. And as we see you, we ask that we would also see ourselves in the mirror of your word. That you would show us ways in which we are not yet like Jesus. Father, that's our prayer, that's our desire. Those of us who know Him want to be like Him, want to follow Him faithfully, and yet we cannot, just as we cannot save ourselves, we cannot make ourselves holy, we cannot make ourselves acceptable to You, and we cannot follow You perfectly. But Lord, by Your grace, we want to continue walking in Your ways, continue as followers of You. Lord, speak to us in this passage. May we know that it is your Holy Spirit directing our thoughts, that if there is something that we need to continue to do just the way we're doing it, that we would have the courage to do that. If there's something that needs to change in our lives, something that we need to stop, something that we need to start again, make it clear. Lord, we desire to do your will, and so we ask you to show it to us that we may obey. Lord, please give us grace to obey. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. We have been talking many times in this series of Mark about the Markan sandwich, the fact that he likes to introduce ideas and then go to something else and then come back to it. And we got a double-decker this morning. Because as you look at the end of chapter 12, we had, before we started that Olivet Discourse, that long teaching passage, we had the poor widow's offering. That was back in chapter 12. And then we had all of chapter 13. And on the other side of that, guess what we have? We have another woman. In this case, we're going to find out it's Mary anointing Jesus' feet. So there's that sandwich. There's the widow giving in her two coins, Jesus teaching, and then the anointing of Jesus. And then within our passage today, these 11 verses, we start off with the religious leaders, the plot to kill Jesus. When are we going to do this? How are we going to do this? Then we shift. to this anointing, the good work to anoint Jesus, and then come to Judas going to say, let me help you with this. I will betray him into your hands. So that's a second sandwich we have going on here. The plot to kill Jesus, the good work to anoint Jesus, and the agreement to betray Jesus. So if you wanted an outline for today, that's what I have for these 11 verses. But I want to take a further step back, because it's been months probably since I've said this, but what is the theme of the Gospel of Mark? What is the theme that he is sharing with us? And that is Jesus as the suffering servant and the call and cost of being his disciple. We're gonna see the cost of being his disciple in this section today. And in the weeks to come, we're gonna continue to see our suffering servant headed to the cross. Now, a key word for you again this morning, and this one is worship. What we see here, I have had the pleasure of getting to study all week long, and this is a beautiful, beautiful portrait of what worshiping Jesus looks like. And no, I'm not talking about the Sanhedrin, and no, I'm not talking about Judas, I'm talking about Mary. Sacrificial worship. I describe this section as the fragrance of worship. And I have three main points for us. First, from verse three, true worship is costly. If you're gonna worship God, it will cost you something. True worship is costly. Number two, true worship is often misunderstood. That's in verses four and five. And then third, true worship pleases Christ. Verses six through nine. Let's go back to verse one and work through this together. After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Many of you are familiar with the Passover. What's the Passover? It was all the way back to the Exodus. You can read about it in Exodus 12. The tenth plague was going to be the slaughter of the firstborn. And how did the children of Israel escape from that? They had to obey. They had to take a lamb. without spot, without blemish. They had to take that lamb and sacrifice it and take its blood and paint that blood on the doorpost. And that angel of death would pass over. And God had told them through Moses, this will be a feast. This will be an observance for you throughout your generations. So for some 1500 years, they were supposed to be practicing this Passover, celebrating this Passover. And when it says the feast of unleavened bread, as soon as the Passover was slain, eaten, that's in the evening of the 14th of that first month, and then we go straight into a seven-day feast called unleavened bread. What does that mean? Well, unleavened bread is bread made without leaven, so it doesn't rise, more like what we would think maybe of a cracker, and that's what they were supposed to take with them, because they didn't have time to let the bread rise. They took unleavened bread with them on their journey when they left in the Exodus. And for generations to come, they had done this right after the Passover, that they would cleanse their homes of leaven, which represented sin. So this is a purification. And during the days of unleavened bread, that week, they would not have any leaven in their homes. They would not have any bread, bread that rises and all puffy yeast rolls kind of thing. No, none of that. as a reminder of the purification that God was requiring of them. It was supposed to represent the absence of sin in their lives. So that's what's going on. That's when it says in two days it was Passover and you may have italics like I do, it skips to and unleavened bread. So it was basically considered one festival by this point in time. Continuing verse one, and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by trickery and put him to death. But they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar of the people. Now, just looking at the Gospel of Mark, these groups have been trying to figure out how to kill him, how to destroy him, all the way back to chapter 3. There are references to the religious leaders meeting together to consider how are we going to kill him, get him out of the way. going back to chapter three, chapter 11, chapter 12. But they realized that it was expeditious for them, it was a good strategy for them not to do it when so many people were around. Because at the time of Passover, that was the place, Jerusalem is the place where everyone was supposed to come who was going to observe Passover. That was according to the law in Deuteronomy, chapter 16. So the city would explode, and I heard so many different numbers of the population, I don't even know what to tell you. But it was probably at least four or five times the normal population. Imagine Wilmington, and that four times more come in for a special festival. So there were lots and lots of people. And many of the people who were coming were sympathetic to Jesus, because they were coming from the Galilee region. And the religious leaders realized, okay, not only is there a lot of crowds, but a lot of these people are sympathetic to Jesus and his cause and his followers. And not only that, Rome knew that the city's packed, the city's crowded, so they were going to clamp down very fast and hard on any riots that took place. And the religious leaders are taking all that into consideration and saying, we better not do it. certainly in front of the crowds. That much is for sure. And they may be saying, we aren't even gonna try to do it during the feast. If we can't do it before, then we're gonna wait till after. Let the crowds clear out, and that's when we'll put them to death. That's their plan. But Judas came, as we see in the end of this section, and his offer to them changed their minds. But here's what I want you to think about. Regardless of what they thought would be the best time, they thought we probably should just wait till afterward. That is not what God intended. Because who is Jesus? Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the ultimate Passover sacrifice. It was gonna happen at Passover regardless of what the religious leaders wanted to do, regardless of what they tried to do. It was still happening according to God the Father's plan from the beginning of time. So with that introduction, that first part, the bread part of the sandwich, now we're getting to the meat of the sandwich, starting in verse three. And our first main point, true worship is costly. And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of, I'm having trouble with that today, I'm sorry, having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on his head. Now Mark gave us a reference of time back up in verse one, two days before the Passover. Here he says, and being in Bethany, he does not give a reference to time. Matthew doesn't either. John, however, does give us a reference of time in terms of this event. John 12, one, you don't have to turn there, but he says this event took place six days before the Passover. So when we back that up, it could have happened perhaps during the day on Friday or Saturday evening, because it probably didn't take place on the Sabbath. My personal opinion, it probably was Saturday evening. Saturday evening when? Saturday evening before what we call the triumphal entry. Well, what does that mean? Why are you pointing that out? Because it seems to me and I'm not alone in this, that Mark has put this out of order on purpose. And so has Matthew. What is Mark doing? He is giving us a contrast between the religious leaders in Judas and Mary. They plotted elaborate schemes. She offered extravagant worship. Now we also have reference to a person here, Simon the leper. Who is he? I don't know. Neither does anybody else. He's called Simon the leper to distinguish him from some of the other Simons we have, Simon the Tanner, Simon the Zealot. There are other Simons. Simon Peter, yes. So he's called Simon the leper, and what that means is that he had been a leper. That much I can tell you. He had been a leper. Either he had died by this point, or what many people think is perhaps Jesus had healed him and he was no longer a leper, because if he were a leper, he wouldn't be giving a house party. Okay, so it's possible that he had been a leper, Jesus had cleansed him from his leprosy, and this may even have been a dinner to honor Jesus, to thank him for healing him. as Jesus sat at the table. And what that means, as he reclined at the table. Some of you have seen this or you're familiar that they didn't sit in chairs like we do and here's a table up here. It was a low table and normally they would lean on an elbow or on a cushion. So they were almost lying down and usually their feet would be away from them. There were practical reasons for that. One is that you gotta get your feet away from you in order to be close enough to the table to eat. And the other is that in many cases they were walking on dusty roads all the time and their feet didn't smell good. So their heads are in and their feet are out. You have that picture in your mind? That's how he's sitting. That also made it much easier for her to anoint his head and feet, as we'll see in a moment. This woman, Mark doesn't name her. Matthew doesn't name her. If we didn't have the Gospel of John, we wouldn't know who it was. But we do know who it is. Her name is Mary. Well, just like the name Simon, Mary is a pretty common name in the New Testament, isn't it? This Mary is the sister of Martha and Lazarus. And both of them were also present at this meal. You can read more about that in the parallel passage in John. Now here's what I want you to learn or remember, remind you of about Mary. Every time we see Mary in scripture, she is in a particular location. Do you know what it is? She is always at the feet, yes, of Jesus. I'm not saying that's where she was 24-7, but every record we have historically in the Bible says that she was at Jesus' feet. Let me show them to you. We won't spend a long time, but I want you to see these. Luke 10, 39. This is what we read in scripture reading earlier. And she, that is Martha, had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. That's the first time we see her in Luke's gospel. John 11 is the chapter where Lazarus is raised from the dead by Jesus. And there in verse 32 it says, then when Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, she's at his feet again, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And then John chapter 12, John gives a detail that Matthew and Mark don't. Verse three says, then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. Going back to Mark now. We've seen that Mary has a habit. She desires to be at Jesus' feet. And here it says, a woman came. That in itself is a little bit unusual because a woman would not approach a man who is reclining at table, eating a feast, eating a meal. She wouldn't approach him unless it was to serve him more food. and yet she comes to him. And I just read to you in John that she not only poured the fragrant oil on his head, she anointed his feet. And she didn't just stop there, she took her hair down and she began to wipe his feet with her hair. You say, that's just weird. Well, it is to us, but it would have been very unusual to them as well because the glory of a Jewish woman in that culture at that time was her hair. Women's hair is a big deal in other cultures to this day, isn't it? So for her to use her hair, her glory, she is giving it to him by wiping his feet with her hair. That's the kind of woman this is. She is devoted to him in worship. Now let's talk a minute about this perfume. Liquid assets like this were pretty common back then. because what you have is a very valuable substance, a liquid that is portable, it's small, it could be hidden in the house, it could be buried in the field. So there were times that instead of having lots and lots of coins, because that's what they had back then, that you may have an heirloom, something very valuable to your family, an inheritance that is in the form of a costly fragrance, a costly oil. There are some people who believe this may have been Mary's dowry, what she would have taken into a marriage. If so, then she is ready to give up everything, including getting married. She's giving everything in this act of worship to Jesus. It says an alabaster flask. This was probably a long-necked bottle, so maybe it had more of a bulb area at the bottom and then a slender way to pour it out. And this alabaster was a special variety of marble. It was quarried in Egypt and it proved to be the best substance available to house one of these fragrant ointments, these perfumes, these oils. And how's it described here in Mark? Very costly oil of spikenard. What this is is an anointing oil that came from a plant native to India. So we have probably Egyptian alabaster with what we have inside is from India, very valuable, very costly. Verse five tells us that the perfume was worth 300 denarii. We've worked through this math before. So I didn't even put it on the screen for you, just hear me for a second. If we take the average income for somebody in North Carolina, this coin was the average day wage for a laborer, for a soldier. So for us, what I came up with when I did this math, the last time it came up in Mark, that's $250. Just using a round number, $250. And it says for 300 days, so almost a year's worth, probably about a year's worth of wages. So what we're talking about, if I can use round numbers with you, 250 a day, $75,000. Now some of you may like to wear cologne or perfume, but I don't think any of you have a $75,000 bottle of perfume at home. If you do, please tell me about it after. I'd like to hear about it. Most of us don't. I won't ask you to raise your hands, but I kind of doubt that anybody in the room has ever given a $75,000 offering to the Lord's work. I have not. This is a large gift. This is extravagant. This is beyond what probably anybody in the room has done. This is an amazing sacrifice. This is amazing worship. Now what did she do? Some of them were sealed, that you had to break them to open them. Some of them had a stopper. Either way, this says she broke it. That doesn't mean she shattered it. What it means is that she probably broke the slender part so that she could pour it out. Now, it was not unusual if you were having a festival, a Jewish feast, that if you were the host, you might anoint a special guest of honor with oil. That wasn't unheard of. But the way you would do that, you would have this special anointing oil, and you would dip your finger in it, and you would dip it on the forehead of your special guest. I guess if you want to be really thorough, she anointed his head and his feet, you might do a drop here, a drop on each foot, that's three drops. That is not what she did. She broke it and she poured it. $75,000. She poured it out. Whatever it was to her, dowry or otherwise, she was not planning to keep anything back. She is giving it all. And there's no way to get it back in the bottle. There's no way to put it back in the bottle, she just broke. And it says she poured it on his head. And as we said from John, she also anointed his feet and wiped his feet with her hair. Beautiful, beautiful picture of all out worship. But that leads us to our second point. True worship is often misunderstood. Verse four says, but there were some who were indignant among themselves and said, why was this fragrant oil wasted? For it might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor, and they criticized her sharply. Now here again, John gives us information that for whatever reason Mark didn't. It was all of the disciples, that's what Matthew says, but there was one in particular who led the group, and guess who that might be? Judas. Judas was the one who spoke out about this waste. That's what he called it. Why was this fragrant oil wasted? I learned something this week about that word. The Greek word that's translated waste here can also be translated destruction or perdition. So this one who's the first to speak up and say, why this waste is the same one Jesus in another passage described him as the son of waste. He's criticizing her for this wasted worship. And Jesus described him as wasting his life. It might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. That sounds self-righteous, doesn't it? John gives us some insight there too. This is verse six from chapter 12 of his gospel. Not that he, Judas, cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box, and he used to take what was put in it. In his thinking, poor Judas. Nobody's poorer than I am, so I'm gonna give to the poor, I'm gonna give to me, I'm gonna steal. So he's grieved because he knows, somebody said he knew the exact cost of this but didn't know the value of anything. That's about right. He knew this was 300 denarii worth of ointment. This is a year's wage. This is $75,000. Why waste it? You can't get it back. Yeah, the room smells nice. That's another thing I haven't thought about until this week, really. In all likelihood, Jesus went to the cross still smelling. of this fragrance. It might have been given to the poor. Well, here's the thing. There is something that should be a higher priority to us even than serving others, because that's important. We should give to the poor. We should help others. We should serve others. You know that. But there is something that takes priority over that, and that is worshiping Jesus. Yes, give to the poor. Yes, serve others. But don't neglect worshiping Jesus. Isn't that the lesson from our scripture reading earlier? It's not that those things aren't good, but what's better? Jesus said of Mary, she has chosen that better part. She has chosen that good thing by sitting at my feet. Are you worshiping him? Is it a priority to you? Mark says they criticized her sharply. They scolded her, another translation says. And another one says they rebuked her harshly. They are letting her have it. David Gusick said it's easy to criticize those who show more love to Jesus than we do. We sometimes want to define a fanatic as someone who is more devoted to Jesus than we are. I read that this week and I thought, yeah, that's the same as driving on the highway. Anybody who drives slower than you are or faster than you are is crazy. Well, in this way, anyone who is more extravagant in his or her worship, oh, that's extreme. That person's out of his mind. That's inappropriate. That's a waste. If you offer extravagant, sacrificial worship to Jesus, believers like the other disciples and unbelievers like Judas will question and criticize you. Count on it. Why would you give all that money to your church or to a missionary or to an orphanage? Why would you waste your time by going to church every Sunday when you could be doing something fun? What are you thinking giving up a steady job to go to the mission field or to go help start a church? What are you thinking? Why would you do that? Why would you waste your life that way? Why do you keep embarrassing yourself by saying amen or lifting your hands or crying or singing so loudly? Folks, I think we hold stuff back. I think we hold a lot back. In terms of the way we worship, in terms of the way we walk with our Savior. Third point, true worship pleases Christ. Verse six says, but Jesus said, let her alone. I would love to have heard how he said that. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for me. For you have the poor with you always. And whatever you wish, you may do them good, but me, you do not have always. Let her alone means don't harass her, don't give her a hard time. Why? She has done a good work for me. That's a totally reasonable translation, but good, And our English comes from two different words in Greek. One of them means good versus evil, moral. That's not this word. The other one can be translated, and if you have an ESV with you, this is what you have here, beautiful. She has done a beautiful thing to me. How would you like to have Jesus say that about something you've done? He's done a beautiful thing to me. She's done a beautiful thing to me. Now, I want to address the elephant in the room. Jesus' statement may come across pretty harsh. Will you have the poor with you always? Jesus isn't saying don't take care of the poor, don't care about the poor. That is not what Jesus is saying. One of my commentaries pointed out very correctly, if you mark in your Bible, look at verse seven. you have a comparison. You can mark, underline, circle, if you want to, the word always versus not always. The comparison Jesus is making is not saying caring for the poor is no good, it's unnecessary. He's saying you can always do that. You can't always worship me in this way. Jesus would not be physically present with them much longer. There would have been very few opportunities for anyone to do what she did after that night. Jesus went on, verse eight, she has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint my body for burial. Assuredly, I say to you, there's that phrase again, like verily, verily, or truly, truly. Pay attention, this is an accurate thing I'm about to say. Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her. She has done what she could. John Phillips, in his paraphrase, adds the word now. She has done what she could now. Because I'm afraid a lot of us have ideas, we dream, we scheme in the right sense of the word. I want to do this, I want to call that person, I want to text that person, I want to give a meal to that person, I want to have these neighbors in, I want to do, and we have great impulses. Some of them may be spirit led. And yet we don't do them. She has done what she could, right now. You all know the verse, Romans 12.1, but I'd like you to see it. I'm going to quote it first in New King James, and I'm going to quote NIV. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, what? A living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is what? Your reasonable service. Your body as a living sacrifice is a reasonable service. You got that? Just to give you a little bit different wording, here's a different translation. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as what? A living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. What is true and proper worship? Being a living sacrifice. See, for the most part, as you read the Old Testament, I know there's some exceptions, perhaps with a dove, the scapegoat, but generally speaking, any animal participating in the sacrifice died. But Jesus died in our place, so we're a living sacrifice. We are nevertheless supposed to be on the altar for him. All that we have, all that we are, dedicated to him in worship. Because it's our reasonable service. It is true and proper worship. Kent Hughes asked these questions. Is my devotion to Christ costing me anything? Is there ever any inconvenience? The fragrance that honors him and refreshes others does not come from giving half our heart or half our wallet or half our talents or half our energy and ambition. It can't be half of a living sacrifice. There is no such thing. Now Jesus said of Mary, she has done what she could. So what can you do? I don't want to turn out loud, but I'd like you to ask yourself, what can you do? You may not be able to get up in front of people and speak, or you may not have opportunity to do that. You may not be able to lead musical worship or even sing very well, but can you bake bread or deliver a meal? Can you mow somebody's lawn? Can you fix somebody's car? Too often we focus on, well, I can't do that. I'm not called to go overseas for missions. We focus on what we can't do instead of doing the things that we can do, doing the things that God has equipped us to do. He has work for us to do, folks. Mary did what she could do, and Jesus commended her. He praised her for it. He wasn't finished. She has come beforehand to anoint my body for burial. Now I'm going to go down a path that is more my personal opinion because there are lots of good men and women who think she couldn't possibly have understood what she was doing. I would say at the very least this is a spirit led moment that she is offering worship the way the spirit's directing her to do. I believe based on what I read about Mary and Martha and their understanding of resurrection and the fact that Mary sat at Jesus' feet, she listened, she paid attention to what he'd said, I think she was on to something that the disciples were oblivious to, my personal opinion. I think Mary understood that Jesus was about to die, and I'm gonna read from Mark chapter 10, verse 33. This is one of the predictions, this is actually the third prediction when he told his disciples, we're going to Jerusalem and I'm gonna die, here we go. Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man, that's Jesus, will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes. And they will condemn him to death and, here it is, deliver him to the Gentiles. and they will mock him and scourge him and spit on him and kill him, and the third day he will rise again. Now, if Mary and Martha had some clue after their interaction in John 11 with Jesus raising Lazarus back to life, if they had a clue, he must mean, I'm not totally sure what he means, but if he says he's gonna rise again, it must be something like that. Perhaps they took seriously that he said, I'm going to be handed over to the Gentiles. Now the method of burial was very important to the Jewish people. It was very important that you follow the timeframe and that you anoint and prepare that body and make it smell as nice as possible and wrap it up the certain way that they did. And she may have come to the realization, nobody's gonna be able to do that. He said his body's gonna be delivered to the Gentiles. Nobody's gonna be able to do that. I'm gonna do that. She was the only person who anointed Jesus' body for burial. Because we have the women who came early in the morning on the first day of the week. Their intention was good, they were gonna do it. He wasn't there. They couldn't. I believe she listened while she was sitting at his feet. I believe she acted on it. She did what she could do, she did it now. And Jesus said, whenever this gospel is preached in the whole world, He's anticipating a time when the gospel will be preached through the whole world. Stay tuned, we're gonna get to chapter 16. And we have it. We have it in three out of four gospels. And the very fact that I'm teaching this this morning fulfills his prophecy. Everybody's gonna hear about what she did. This total, sacrificial, heartfelt, loving worship is gonna be talked about forever until I come back. And it is. One more thought from Kent Hughes. What does Mary's magnificent example tell us Jesus wants from us? He wants something beautiful from us. Beautiful because of its motivation. A flask of costly perfume poured out in love. Beautiful because it comes spontaneously from our hearts at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, done solely for our Savior's glory. He wants us to put Him before everything else, even the poor. He wants us to do what we can. He wants every last drop. He wants everything. That's simple for me to say. That's simple for you to write down. That is very hard to do. And in my opinion, it's not a one and done either. It's something that we have to do, and we have to do again, and we have to do again until he comes. Now honestly, I wish the story that we're studying this morning ended there. But it doesn't, because we have two more verses. And many have pointed out the sharp contrast, we're making a hard turn here, between the devotion of Mary and the treachery of Judas. Verse 10, then Judas Iscariot, one of the 12, went to the chief priests to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. So he sought how he might conveniently betray him. Now we'll get a chance to talk more about Judas. I'm not gonna spend long on this. Well, let's remember a few things. Jesus chose Judas. He chose him. He got to see the miracles. He got to hear the teaching. Several chapters ago, we read that Jesus sent them out. He got to cast out demons in Jesus' name. He got to heal people in Jesus' name. And we don't know quite what was going on. Many people believe that Judas was disenchanted by this point. He likely was the only disciple from the area of Judea instead of up in the Galilee. And he had his ideas of what the Messiah should be, and Jesus wasn't fulfilling that very well, was he? because he was a suffering servant. He came the first time to die. He will come a second time to reign, and they wanted a Messiah to come and reign and overthrow Rome. Whatever the case, he was greedy. And whatever his motivations, he did not believe in Jesus as the Savior. He never repented. He never believed with saving faith. He came to the chief priests. They had issued orders seeking the arrest of Jesus in John 11, 57. He could help them because he knew Jesus' whereabouts. Remember, they were afraid of the people. We read that a couple chapters ago. They're afraid of the people. They would have taken him by force right then when he spoke that parable against them, but they feared the people. So they're looking for an opportune time, and in walks Judas. So with this new development, now they don't have to wait anymore until after the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Change of plans, guys. And they promised to give him money. That tells us that at least in part, his motivation was greed. Couple of verses, and I don't think I'll even comment on that. I'm just gonna read you what the Bible says about greed. Proverbs 15, 27, he who is greedy for gain troubles his own house. 1 Timothy 6, 10, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. When it says he sought, it means he kept on seeking. He busied himself continually looking for an opportunity of how he could conveniently betray him. Well, what does that mean? That means an opportune moment, a suitable occasion When Jesus was away from the crowds, that's what they required. It couldn't be out in front of everybody. That likely, during these days, meant at night, and that's how it turned out. So there we go. Our sandwich for these 11 verses. But in the heart of that sandwich are these three main points. True worship is costly. True worship is often misunderstood. True worship pleases Christ. What are we going to do in response to this? I don't think I need to tell you not to go betray Jesus. I don't think we have to make application for those first two or the last two verses. But what's God leading you to do? I don't know. I'm not the Holy Spirit. But knowing how the Holy Spirit works in my heart, I suspect that He's working in yours this morning for something specific. And so are you going to do what you can now? Would you bow your heads and close your eyes? Whatever the Holy Spirit has laid on your heart, if there's something there, talk to Him about it. If there's some action that you should take, some change that you should make, talk to Him about it and then obey. Are you a living sacrifice? Are you all in worshiping Christ out of love for Him? Our Father, this is a very convicting passage. I think if we were gonna be honest, most of us have never worshiped you in this way. And Lord, you don't call all of us to do the same thing. You aren't even here bodily for us to anoint you. But you desire for us to worship you in spirit and in truth. You are seeking worshipers. Father, quicken us, give us life through your Holy Spirit to worship you. as we study your word, as we pray, as we sing your praises, as we share the gospel with other people, as we serve people in this church body, as we serve others around us. Lord, help us to get our priorities right, to worship you, to love you most of all. and then to love others the way we love ourselves. Straighten out our thinking, straighten out our priorities, straighten out our schedule and our finances and our actions. Let us stop caring what other people think. Let us care only what you think. May we do what we can to show our love and worship for you today, in Jesus' name, amen.