Services | Extravagant Worship

Bulletin

Hymn # 448 “Because He Lives”

SCRIPTURE READING – Revelation 4:5 - 11
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate

Praise and Worship
“Echo Holy”
“God Really Loves Us”
“Great I Am”

Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“Extravagant Worship”

PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection

“At the Cross (Love Ran Red)”

Sermon Notes
Mark 14:1 & 2 2 days before Passover and Unleavened Bread the religious leaders were looking for a way to kill Jesus before the Holy Days
Mark 14:3 – 9 A woman during the meal poured on Jesus expensive perfume and was criticized for it, but Jesus told them to leave her alone, what she did was good and to be remembered
2 Samuel 24:18– 25 David would not make an offering to God that cost him nothing
Hebrews 9:11 – 14 Jesus offered Himself to God for us

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Scritpures

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Transcript of Service

Have you ever been criticized for being too generous, especially perhaps when it comes to your faith? Or have people question you, why do you attend church so much? And you think, I only go once or twice a week. We're going to take a look at this week at several people who present offerings, and we're going to ask the question, what offering to God is too expensive? is the praises that we've been singing and the scriptures we've been reading. It's just rehearsal for the reality to come that we will be standing before the great I am singing and praising his name because he's worthy of it. The one who took our sins and our shame and placed it on himself so that we might be able to stand and then fall at his feet because he is the great I am.

Started a little early in the sense of if you have your Bibles, and you should, please turn to the Gospel of Mark chapter 14. We're going to start with the verse first. And while you're turning that up, I want to say some preliminary things. Socrates used to ask questions to get people to think and to reason and to come to some kind of conclusion and maybe even the truth. When I went to law school, and I'm sure there are other law schools that they use what we call the Socratic method. They would ask you questions and then you had to give answers. Now, in my law school class at least, when the professor called you, had to stand up and then think on your feet and give your reasoning in front of everybody and the professor. And usually their job was to make you look very foolish and have you sit down and then have another victim. So today I'm going to use, if you will, the Socratic method, except I'm not going to ask any one of you to stand up and me ask a bunch of questions. I'm going to ask you one question that I'm not wanting you to answer verbally, but I want you to consider. All right, and the question is this. What worship can you give that is too expensive or too extravagant?

Because we all seem by our conduct and practice to have set a budget on those things. We're going to take a look at some people who didn't set a budget and to have what they did maybe consider what we should do in the future. And so looking at Mark chapter 14, it says this, now the Passover and unleavened bread were two days away. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize him by stealth and kill him. You see, they still have their agenda. They don't care what the truth is. They don't care what his answers have been. It's they're wanting to seek and kill him. But there's a problem that they have. For they were saying, not during the festival, otherwise there might be a riot of the people. Because Jesus was popular with the people, because he was healing and forgiving and giving love and doing the times, the things that Jesus always did. And the people gravitated to him. So they didn't want to seize him because by the holy requirements, the men who were Jewish were required to go to Jerusalem 3 * a year and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Passover was one of them.

And so Jerusalem was filled with people and Jesus had been ministering in Galilee and Judea and other places. And so he had a fame that was unmatched. And so they said, we got to get rid of him, but we got to be careful when and how. And when he was in Bethany, that being Jesus, At the home of Simon the leper, and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an alabaster vial, a very costly perfume of pure nard. And she broke the vial and poured it over his head. Now, first off, I want to say that some people try to equate or say these two situations are the same. I contend that they are not. There is a situation where the scriptures talk about six days beforehand, Mary did a very similar thing. I do not believe that the scriptures confuse these two events, that these are two very separate things. Why? Because people's response to Jesus would not necessarily just be one person. Jesus loved people. He forgave people. And so their reaction would be that they would want to minister and worship back to him.

So I don't think this is confusion of two different things. This is at Simon Peter's house, and I tend to think the other one was at Mary and Martha and Lazarus' home. So this is the second one. But so notice, so there's this woman who comes and we're not told who, and it's irrelevant. It's what she does that is relevant, not who she is. And I'm going to make a comment about another woman that we don't know the name of, but what she did was relevant. So she takes this alabaster vial, which means it's a fairly expensive vase. It's made of alabaster. And she breaks it, which means you can't reuse it. And she takes this very costly perfume of Purinard made from various spices or whatever, and she poured it over, she poured the entire bottle over Jesus's head. She was saying, I want to do something in honor of who you are and what you've done.

And in essence, she is giving her worship to him. She is saying, you are more worthy to me than this vial of perfume. That I want to use it to show you and others how valuable I consider you to be. That this alabaster vial and this perfume is far less value to me than you are. So she does this thing. But some were indignantly remarking to one another, why has this perfume been wasted? You see, the comments aren't about the use of it. It's they consider pouring the perfume on Jesus's head a waste. But again, there are a lot of people you've probably come in contact with who kind of view the same thing. Well, why do you go to church? And they may say, well, you may need that, but I don't. And they don't understand why you don't do certain things that they do when they do them because you say, well, that's the time that we have worship service. And they'll say, well, you spend too much time at church. And I go, I spend an hour or two on a Sunday and maybe, a Wednesday evening, that's a lot of time. That's extravagant.

But again, to other people, they think, wow, I'd rather do whatever they would rather do, which to me is a waste of time because we are worshiping and being in the presence of God. And I would rather be in his presence And I won't name any particular person because some of you like that person, some of you won't. But whoever is big, important, wealthy or whatever, I'd rather be in the presence of God than that person. Because God has already done something for me. And that person, no matter what they might do for me, won't be what Jesus did for me. But they consider it a waste, not worthy to be done. And again, what is perfume for? To make people smell good. Especially in those days when people didn't take as many baths as we do today. You needed a perfume so that not only did you smell good, you didn't smell bad. And so you don't buy perfume to put it on a shelf going, look at that alabaster vase of nard. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah, well, when are you going to use it? No, I'm just going to look at it. Well, what's the point of the perfume? To use it. It's not a stock. It has purpose. And they said, so they have an alternative. Rather than wasting it on Jesus, they say, but some were indignantly marketed to winter. Why has it been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor. And they were scolding her.

So not only did they object to what she did, they told her their objection. And they not only just said, maybe you should have, they scolded her. They were angrily rebuking what she had done. Because they said this cost 300 naira. Now, basically, a denarii was a day's wages. So 300 would be 300 days. And if you consider this is a Jewish event, There's 52 Sabbaths, so that's 352. There's also seven holy days that you're not supposed to work. And so that makes it 359. That's really close to a whole year. So basically she gave a whole year's worth of wages to honor and worship and to show the value that she placed on Jesus. But other people said, no, you should have taken that money and given it to the poor. I have another alternative rather than a sonnet.

Maybe you take the perfume if you're going to do something else and sprinkle it on poor people so they get a chance to having luxury and to smell good. You see, there's more one way to do things. So they didn't say, well, here's some options. They were just indignant that she wasted it on Jesus. And again, those of us who are believers have probably experienced what we consider minimal investment in God as a waste, and people will object. But Jesus said, Let her alone. Why do you bother her? She has done a good deed to me. Jesus acknowledges what she did was a good thing for him. He didn't say, well, you wasted a young one. He said, that was a good act. You didn't waste it. You did good. Now, some person's good may not be another person's good, but he says, your worship of me was a good thing. And he will give this reasoning. For you will always have the poor with you. And whenever you wish, you can do good to them. He's saying, you criticize, sir, what are you doing for the poor? You will have, as long as there are people on earth, you'll have an opportunity to do good to poor people.

Because guess what? Even today, in the United States of America, the richest country that probably the world has ever seen, guess what we have? Poor people? Now, they may not be as poor as some of the poor people in other countries, but they are still poor by our standards. So Jesus said, you always have an opportunity to do good to poor people. You don't always have an opportunity to do good for Jesus. So he said, she actually is taking the right time and opportunity to do good during a time that is limited, because why? She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for the burial. Jesus is saying, her act of worship prepares my body to be buried. You can help the poor any time. There's only going to be 1 occasion that you will have an opportunity to prepare my body for burial. And she took it. And it didn't matter the cost. her worship was not extravagant, but by our standards, probably was. She didn't set a budget. She didn't say, you know, we've got the holidays coming up and people will say, well, I got to set a budget for Christmas. And you know, that's a good thing.

But when it came to Jesus, she goes, there is no budget. I'm going to give to him what I value him to be. Regardless of the criticism I get, and then he says this: Truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel. has preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her. And notice, in today, we are remembering her almost 2,000 years later. We don't know her name, but in her memory, and in her memory, we should ask our question, what have we set as a budget to worship God? to come Sunday morning and that's it. To, oh, I'll come Sunday morning and I'll go to a Bible study and prayer meeting. That's really extravagant. Or maybe, you know, I might even get up on Monday morning and pray. And the question isn't what little do we do, but how extravagantly do we consider. Now, there's another woman that I want to mention. When I was a young person many decades ago, well, I liked certain, what we now call classic rock, because when I was a young person, it wasn't classic, it was just rock'n'roll. I mean, because you have to have a certain length of time before it's classic. And so I liked some of the classic, but there was several groups. One of the groups that I liked a lot was Simon and Garfunkel. And Simon and Garfunkel had songs like, I am a rock, I'm an island. And when you're a teenage boy, you're going, yeah, I don't need the world, the world doesn't mean, you know, wait a minute. But there was one song that has always captivated my memory. And the song is entitled Dangling Conversations.

And one of the lines in that song says, At no time do we place our bookmarkers to measure what we've lost. I use bookmarkers and usually so I don't damage the book and whatever. So it knows where I am, but I don't place it there because I haven't learned what it read. I've got to this place that I need to go further. Well, unfortunately, by necessity, we have in our scriptures chapters and verses. And so in chapter 13, Jesus talked about the signs of his return and the signs of the destruction of the temple. And because chapter 13 separates what this woman did versus at the end of chapter 12, I want to remember that woman as well. That was a poor widow.

And Jesus observed while rich people were giving him large sums of money, which Jesus said came out of their abundance, he commented on a poor widow woman, again, we don't know the name, who put in two copper coins. And Jesus said that woman gave more than all of the people else combined, not just equal to, but more than all combined. because she gave out of her poverty while they gave out of her wealth. So you could say even 2 copper coins was an extravagant gift because she gave all that she had to live on. One woman breaks the vial, impours costly perfume worth a year's wages. Another woman offers to the treasury a penny. And Jesus comments on both. You see, it's not how much you have. It's how much you have what do you then devote to Him. You could be richer than the richest person in the world. You can be poorer than the poorest person in the world. And Jesus says, I will hold both of you in equal way. What do you do in your offering? There's another person I want us to consider, and that's David. And so in 2 Samuel chapter 24, verse 18, it says this. So Gad came to David that day and said to him, go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing pole, the threshing floor of Aruna, the Jebusite. So David went up according to the word of Gad, just as the Lord had commanded. So Jesus, I mean, David does what he's told to do through the instructions of the Lord. And Aruna looked down and saw the king and his servants crossing over towards him. And Araunah went out and bowed his face to the ground before the king. He showed him value and worth by placing himself beneath the king. Then Araunah said, why has my lord the king come to his servant? And David said, to buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord. that the plague may be held back from the people. So she's, I've been instructed to buy your property from you so that I can build an altar because the people are suffering and God has commanded me to do this. And Aruna said to David, let my lord the king take and offer up what is good in his sight. Look the octen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the octen for wood. He's saying, I'm not only going to give you the thunder, I'm going to give you the materials to offer up the offering. I'm going to give you the ox that you can slay as an offering, and I'm going to give you the wood that you can use to burn up the offering as a burnt offering.

So here you go, because I vow you, king, so much. If God has told you to do it, then here it is. It's a free gift. Do what you do. But notice, Everything O King Aruna gives to the king. And Aruna said to the king, may the Lord your God accept you. David understands that the gift is being offered in genuine sincerity that in response to what God has done. So he says, let me be a part of what God has commanded you to do. I'll give you the stuff so you can comply with God. Because the king could have said, I'm not selling it, not for sale. Take a hike. But not only does he, says, it's yours, because God wants it. However, the king said to Urunna, no, but I will surely buy it from you for a price, for I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God, which costs me nothing.

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver. I'm not going to take your gift, not because it's not a genuine offer and not because I don't understand the intent by which you're offering it, but I'm rejecting it because I will not give to God something that costs me nothing. Unfortunately, most of people today who come to church, it's kind of like the kid who hasn't gone to church before and his parents sent him And they give him a dollar to put it in the offering plate, and he does so, and when he goes home, they go, he goes, well, what'd you think of church? He goes, well, it's a pretty good show for a dollar. And that's kind of what we come to be entertained, or we come to see our friends, or we come because we're supposed to. In essence, it costs us nothing, or we're expecting to get back more.

And you know, even when it comes to Israel you'll hear people quote we should give to Israel because if we give to Israel God has promised to bless us back we are so in essence they're saying let's give to get in essence that's offering God nothing because you're expecting more in return I will not offer God an offering that costs me nothing David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And thus the Lord was moved by prayer for the land and the plague was held back from Israel. So God does what God said he would because David did what was commanded to do and he made that offer because it cost him. I want you to consider one other person who made an offering. And in Hebrews chapter 9, verse 11 through 14, it says this, But when Christ appeared as the high priest of the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation. And not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood. He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled, those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serving the living God? You see, Jesus offered himself up as the perfect Lamb of God to be, because God had commanded him to do so, and in obedience to the Father, he did so. But he did so for his love of the Father and his love for us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

So Jesus offered up his life that we might have eternal life. So I ask you the question again, what amount of offering is too exorbitant or beyond our means? If Jesus offered himself up for us, how do we not offer ourselves up for him? And let's face it, he's the one who gets a raw deal. We get him his love, his mercy, his forgiveness, his kindness, his presence, and he gets us. If I was his agent, I'd say, don't do the deal. Because I know exactly who I am. He has been faithful to me eternally. I've been faithful to him several times. And if I presented my body every single moment from this moment until I breathe my last, would still be an offering too small for who he's worth and his value. And whether other people criticize it or not, I understand. I am not wasting my time. I am not wasting my life. I'm not wasting my breath. I am actually investing. Because the Lord said, you can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.

And even if that wasn't the case, and you don't send it on ahead, and I would go to there in heaven as a pauper, He's still worthy of it. He's worthy of everything I have and everything that I am. The problem is, that's why Jesus tells us to take up our cross daily and follow him, because I keep resurrecting myself almost every moment. So I got to get that old man dead. so that I might serve Him.

So we're going to sing a hymn of, a song of invitation to remind us not of the offering that I'm asking us to give Him, but the offering that He gave for us.

And all God's people said.




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