SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_01: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: Embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Today, be encouraged with a word from my guest speaker.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_02: I want to open today with a quick toast that Mark Twain got to offer on January 13th in 1868, almost a full 50 years before we had Mother's Day as a national holiday.
SPEAKER_02: It's customary to give toasts at some of these bigger banquets, and Mr.
SPEAKER_02: Twain was asked to give this particular toast on the evening.
SPEAKER_02: And I've um edited this a little bit because he can be a little arnery, but I think I've cultivated some of the nuggets of what his heart was trying to express towards the gender.
SPEAKER_02: So uh bear with me, and I hope that you enjoy this reading from Mr.
SPEAKER_02: Twain and his musings.
SPEAKER_02: Mr.
SPEAKER_02: President, I do not know why I should have been singled out to receive the greatest distinction of the evening.
SPEAKER_02: For so the office of replying to the toast to woman has been regarded in every age.
SPEAKER_02: I do not know why I have received this distinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club.
SPEAKER_02: But be that as it may, Mr.
SPEAKER_02: President, I am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen anyone who would have accepted it more gladly or labored with a heartier good will to do the subject justice than I.
SPEAKER_02: Human intelligence cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir.
SPEAKER_02: She sews our buttons, she mends our clothes, she ropes us in at church fairs, she confides in us, she gives us good advice, she soothes our aching brow, she bears our children.
SPEAKER_02: In all the relations of life, sir, it is but just and a graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is exceptionally resilient.
SPEAKER_02: Wheresoever you place woman, sir, in whatever position or estate, she is an ornament to that place.
SPEAKER_02: She occupies and is a treasure to the world.
SPEAKER_02: What, sir, would the people of this earth be without woman?
SPEAKER_02: Well, sir, they would be scarce.
SPEAKER_02: Then let us cherish her, let us protect her, let us give her our support and encouragement, our sympathies, our courage, and our strength.
SPEAKER_02: Mr.
SPEAKER_02: President, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautiful, worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference.
SPEAKER_02: Not any here will refuse to drink to her health right cordially, for each and every one of us has personally known and loved and honored the very best of them all, his or her own mother.
SPEAKER_02: So we thank you, Mr.
SPEAKER_02: Twain.
SPEAKER_02: I want to give you a few quotes from mom, the desk of mom.
SPEAKER_02: And uh we've had a couple good belly laughs in our home over some of these, and they ring true.
SPEAKER_02: So I hope you enjoy them as well.
SPEAKER_02: Silence is golden, unless you have kids.
SPEAKER_02: Then silence is suspicious.
SPEAKER_02: A mother is she who can take the place of all others, but whose place no one else can take.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing is really lost until your mom can't find it.
SPEAKER_02: If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_02: From a mom to her daughters.
SPEAKER_02: Be a girl with a mind, a woman with attitude, and a lady with class.
SPEAKER_02: Good moms let you lick the beaters.
SPEAKER_02: Great moms turn them off first.
SPEAKER_02: Regarding your birth.
SPEAKER_02: I find it strange that we celebrate you on the day that your mom did all the work.
SPEAKER_02: We give our children two things as mothers.
SPEAKER_02: One is roots and the other is wings.
SPEAKER_02: All these moms on Pinterest making their soaps and reindeer-shaped treats, and I'm all like, I took a shower and kept the kids alive.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Lastly, our personal favorite, and we have chuckles about this too, because this has been a true thing in our house.
SPEAKER_02: You know your life has changed when going to the grocery store alone seems like a vacation.
SPEAKER_02: Facts.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: I want to open here with Genesis 1.27, but first let us pray.
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, God, we thank you.
SPEAKER_02: We give you glory for this day that we pay tribute, God, to the glory of your creation, to the completion of your creation, and what your capstone was and what was needed in the garden that day.
SPEAKER_02: God, I pray that every woman in the sound of my voice would be honored by your words, Father, in your good book.
SPEAKER_02: God, I pray you would bless the hearing and reading of your word today.
SPEAKER_02: And in Jesus' name, amen.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so in Genesis 1.7, familiar verse, we're going to revisit this quickly.
SPEAKER_02: So God created human beings in his own image.
SPEAKER_02: In the image of God, he created the male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_02: The complete picture of God is found through the lens of combining both man and woman.
SPEAKER_02: Their natures together paint a whole view of God's nature.
SPEAKER_02: Eve completed the perfection of God's creation and humanity, perfectly complementing Adam in every way.
SPEAKER_02: When thinking through the message today, I was kind of thinking I was going to go in the Old Testament, the great women, the great stories, the legacy that's been handed down through Deborah, Esther, Ruth.
SPEAKER_02: One couldn't go wrong on Mother's Day, talking about the Mary, mother of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Even pausing for a moment to consider Sarah, Rebekah, even Moses' mother, through which the line of God's people, the tribes of Israel, would be preserved and expanded and grown through these amazing women.
SPEAKER_02: And I thought I was going to talk about Isaac and his relationship to Sarah.
SPEAKER_02: And we know in the story where Rebekah comes along as a new bride, just as Isaac has lost his mother.
SPEAKER_02: And he's lamenting, he's in grief.
SPEAKER_02: And Rebecca gives him great comfort from his mother, Sarah, who was most doubtedly Isaac was the apple of her eye.
SPEAKER_02: Giving birth at a time and a season in her life where she didn't think it was still possible, right?
SPEAKER_02: There's this funny, Sarah had a sense of humor, and I dig that because there's many aspects of her personality and the strength and the courage and the tenacity.
SPEAKER_02: And you carry all that inside of your DNA, women.
SPEAKER_02: And it's awesome.
SPEAKER_02: And so we see those reflections, the fortitude that Deborah had, Esther bringing freedom to her people through humility and obedience.
SPEAKER_02: Ruth, a Moabite woman where Jesus' lineage is preserved in the most unlikely of ways, out of the traditional way of marriage and what was happening in the Jewish culture at the time.
SPEAKER_02: God's painting a beautiful picture of femininity, strength, character, and fortitude in his scripture and his text.
SPEAKER_02: But what hit me last week, and I thought that's where I was headed, but I'm in worship, and God, like through an arrow through my heart with the Holy Spirit in my mind, crystallized this vision of where he wanted me to take today's message, and that's with the New Testament with two specific women and their worship to his son.
SPEAKER_02: And it was powerful because he unlocks something in my own understanding in a greater and deeper way that I just, he's like, You've got to share this on Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_02: And so with that, I want to look at a few passages where pure worship was given to Jesus by women in the Bible in a very unique and powerful way.
SPEAKER_02: See, women offer something in their worship to God that is so precious, it's powerful, it's beautiful, it's valued and needed.
SPEAKER_02: What they bring with their hearts to the Father unlocks the throne room of heaven.
SPEAKER_02: Men, we can learn a little from our women in this area.
SPEAKER_02: My wife is a musician and she's skilled and she has a heart for worship, and her spirit is so connected to the spirit that when we press into that, our home, we come into unity, and she ushers in through her worship and her obedience and her giftings to bring down the presence of God and the kingdom comes in our home in very special ways.
SPEAKER_02: And we've been so blessed and anointed by her obedience and the beauty of her worship and calling us into that place.
SPEAKER_02: So when we look deeper into the text of these two women that I want to highlight, their ministry to Jesus is unique.
SPEAKER_02: And we're gonna get in there now.
SPEAKER_02: The first story comes out of Luke 7, verses 36 through 50.
SPEAKER_02: The sinful woman who interrupts a dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is invited to a dinner.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna paraphrase this for just lack of time, and I want to kind of get into the second story and spend a little more time in there.
SPEAKER_02: But in this case, the sinful woman shows up.
SPEAKER_02: She's alluded to as she's probably a prostitute of the time.
SPEAKER_02: She comes in and finds Jesus at the table.
SPEAKER_02: When a certain moral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume.
SPEAKER_02: Similarity one.
SPEAKER_02: Then she knelt behind him at his feet.
SPEAKER_02: Humility.
SPEAKER_02: She doesn't present herself in front of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: She starts her ministry out of deep reverence and humility from behind him.
SPEAKER_02: He can't even see her.
SPEAKER_02: Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping.
SPEAKER_02: Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair.
SPEAKER_02: Point number two, similarity number two.
SPEAKER_02: Hold that.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to come back to hair.
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty key here.
SPEAKER_02: Then she kept kissing his feet, point number three, and putting perfume on them.
SPEAKER_02: The Pharisees saw this.
SPEAKER_02: He knew who she was in the community, thinking that Jesus was unaware.
SPEAKER_02: He starts to have this mental thing.
SPEAKER_02: And then Jesus reads his mental mail.
SPEAKER_02: There's not a dialogue yet.
SPEAKER_02: Simon's judging Jesus for his response and acceptance of this woman.
SPEAKER_02: And then he reaches out and says, Simon.
SPEAKER_02: Then Jesus answered his thoughts.
SPEAKER_02: Simon, he said to the Pharisee, I have something to say to you.
SPEAKER_02: Simon said, Go ahead, teacher.
SPEAKER_02: Then Jesus told him a story.
SPEAKER_02: He's talking about a man who owed 500 pieces of silver and a man who owned 50.
SPEAKER_02: Both are forgiven their debts.
SPEAKER_02: The question is, who do you suppose loved him more after that?
SPEAKER_02: And Simon said, I suppose the one who canceled the larger debt.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said, You're correct.
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: Now this is critical.
SPEAKER_02: Don't miss this.
SPEAKER_02: And this is where the ministry of Jesus starts to take place to this woman's worship.
SPEAKER_02: He turns and looks at the woman simultaneously right here in the scripture.
SPEAKER_02: 44.
SPEAKER_02: Then Jesus turned to the woman and said to Simon, He's visually acknowledging this woman's ministry to him, and he's rebuking Simon, giving him the shoulder, giving him the same cold shoulder that Jesus received when he came in and wasn't treated with the common courtesies of the day.
SPEAKER_02: So he's like, fine, I'm going to show you a little rebuke as well and show you kind of what it feels like.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's acknowledging this sinful woman who I'm sure Simon, to have this woman in his in his house at his table, guy was probably coming unglued inside.
SPEAKER_02: Probably want to turn the tables over and everybody get out.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: He's definitely uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_02: Then Jesus said, Look at this woman kneeling here.
SPEAKER_02: When I entered your home, you didn't offer me water to wash the dust from my feet.
SPEAKER_02: She has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
SPEAKER_02: You didn't greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet.
SPEAKER_02: You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.
SPEAKER_02: I tell you, her sins, and they are many, have been forgiven.
SPEAKER_02: So she has shown me much love, but a person who has who has forgiven little shows only little love.
SPEAKER_02: Then Jesus said to the woman, Your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_02: Her worship to Jesus was filled with both faith and repentance.
SPEAKER_02: She washes his feet with her tears of great remorse and repentance.
SPEAKER_02: The feet that weren't clean, that had been traveling through the streets with animal debris and all kinds of stuff, I'm sure nasty, open-toed sandals, things are pretty funky.
SPEAKER_02: And she's washing them and kissing them with her tears and her hair.
SPEAKER_02: She offers perfume and affection, kissing his feet.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus restores her soul, forgives her many sins with a new identity.
SPEAKER_02: He turns his gaze to her as he talks to Simon.
SPEAKER_02: He acknowledges her worship in front of the local religious crew in the room.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus admonishes his host for neglecting the most basic courtesies of the day water to wash and oil to anoint a dinner guest.
SPEAKER_02: She ministers to Jesus and restores him to the stature of an honored guest at the table of his host.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus releases her into the peace of his kingdom and salvation from her sins.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he says at the very end.
SPEAKER_02: After the Pharisees are all grumbling at the table, who's this guy that can like release sins and forgive sins?
SPEAKER_02: Still not getting who Jesus is in that moment.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says to the woman, Your faith has saved you, go in peace.
SPEAKER_02: She is restored publicly by the grace of the Father through his Son.
SPEAKER_02: Because he who the Son sets free, or she who the Son sets free, is free indeed.
SPEAKER_02: This is whole Jesus' whole ministry.
SPEAKER_02: And she acknowledges him publicly, so he redeems her publicly.
SPEAKER_02: Because in the gospel we see Jesus say, Who acknowledges me in front of men, I will also acknowledge you in front of my Father on that great day.
SPEAKER_02: And so, church, when we're all up there as a heavenly host of saints, worshiping, every knee bowing, every tongue confessing who Jesus Christ is, the Father is going to acknowledge this woman, this great sinful woman with a resume, who with deep repentance, love, and worship upon Jesus, she'll be presented as somebody who got it.
SPEAKER_02: This is my beloved daughter.
SPEAKER_02: This is my beloved son.
SPEAKER_02: These are the words.
SPEAKER_02: This is the words that are offered when we take our hearts to the cross.
SPEAKER_02: She got it.
SPEAKER_02: She understood that the temple didn't house the presence of God anymore.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus walked among her as the Messiah, and she went into a Pharisee's house, risking great rebuke and tribulation.
SPEAKER_02: And she went in there bravely, anyways.
SPEAKER_02: The perfect worship, in my opinion, was modeled by a woman, Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus.
SPEAKER_02: The familiar account we will recall from the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to take this right out of verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: This is verses 1 through 8.
SPEAKER_02: As we frame this up, the previous chapter, Jesus had showed up on the scene, had raised Lazarus from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: The most wanted sign for the Pharisees in the time right at this point.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus just rose to number one.
SPEAKER_02: Lazarus is now on their hit list as number two.
SPEAKER_02: Because of that miracle, many people were turning away from the teachings of the Pharisees, and they were going to temple.
SPEAKER_02: Now they were seeking out the ministry and the gospel of Jesus and seeking his kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: And the Pharisees had had enough of that.
SPEAKER_02: And they were like, okay, this dude is like public enemy number one, and Lazarus is right behind him.
SPEAKER_02: So coming off the heels of that ministry, six days before Passover.
SPEAKER_02: So most likely Saturday night, they're having their meal.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is about to enter into Jerusalem the next day, riding on a donkey.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the scene before that happens, before the whole of Jerusalem comes out to worship him with palm branches, Hosanna, Hosanna.
SPEAKER_02: Six days before the Passover celebration began, Jesus arrived in Bethany, the home of Lazarus, the man he had raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: A dinner was prepared in Jesus' honor.
SPEAKER_02: Martha served.
SPEAKER_02: She's in familiar space.
SPEAKER_02: And Lazarus was among those who ate with him.
SPEAKER_02: However, then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from the essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus' feet with it.
SPEAKER_02: Wiping his feet with her hair, the house was filled with the fragrance.
SPEAKER_02: But Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would soon betray him, said, That perfume was worth a year's wages.
SPEAKER_02: It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.
SPEAKER_02: Not that he cared for the poor, for Judas was a thief, and since he was in charge of the disciples' money bag, he often stole some for himself.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus replied to Judas in that moment, Leave her alone.
SPEAKER_02: She did this in preparation for my burial.
SPEAKER_02: You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.
SPEAKER_02: I want to show you this picture.
SPEAKER_02: This was painted at the worship conference.
SPEAKER_02: Most of the paintings sold.
SPEAKER_02: When God downloaded my message to me last week, I remember seeing this at the worship conference.
SPEAKER_02: This was painted by Chris Story, one of the worship student worship academy students.
SPEAKER_02: And it blessed me so much that I was like, I went up to Chris during the graduation last week and I said, Is that I didn't know she painted it.
SPEAKER_02: I said, Do you remember this picture?
SPEAKER_02: Not knowing if it was still available, and I was going to commission her to do something because she does great work.
SPEAKER_02: And almost everything else had sold.
SPEAKER_02: And she goes, Oh, yeah, that one was mine, and it actually didn't sell.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm buying that.
SPEAKER_02: I want it for Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_02: Because just moments before, God had crystallized this message in my mind, and I remembered this painting.
SPEAKER_02: And here's a picture of a broken alabaster jar, a year's worth of salary, of income, probably the greatest treasure she owned, and she's pouring it over Jesus, anointing him, preparing him for burial, and wiping him with her feet, with her hair.
SPEAKER_02: Mary models the purest worship to Jesus days before his destiny with the cross.
SPEAKER_02: She initiates by worship and anointing Jesus into the next phase of his ministry to humanity.
SPEAKER_02: She understands, probably greater than most in that moment, even probably greater than his disciples, the timeline, the countdown to Jesus' destiny.
SPEAKER_02: She gets it.
SPEAKER_02: She's in the room and she doesn't care.
SPEAKER_02: She brings her full worship in every aspect, and we're going to look at all of what she does here.
SPEAKER_02: There's not a lot of verses, but if you stop and you pause, we're going to excavate all the things that are happening in this moment.
SPEAKER_02: Mary offers great and costly sacrifice in her worship.
SPEAKER_02: And then she takes her hair.
SPEAKER_02: And there's something really fascinating here.
SPEAKER_02: It was highly unusual and out of regular practice for Jewish women of the time to take down their hair in a public setting.
SPEAKER_02: It was of value, it was of their identity, it was sacred.
SPEAKER_02: And yet now we have the second time in Jesus' ministry where women are washing and worshiping him at his feet with their hair.
SPEAKER_02: Hair is important in my home.
SPEAKER_02: I grew up with two older sisters.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not unfamiliar with countertops and bathrooms being full of product and care, right?
SPEAKER_02: I could probably tell you more than you want to know about feminine care hygiene beauty because of that.
SPEAKER_02: Thread counts, those are things that, thank God, for my Navy SEAL grandfather, because he helped balance some of that in my life.
SPEAKER_02: But it was good.
SPEAKER_02: But now I have a daughter who introduced me to some new things I didn't even know existed.
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm like familiar with face masks and all that.
SPEAKER_02: And then this year, from some birthdays, a hair mask was given.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, what is a hair mask?
SPEAKER_02: It sounds fantastic.
SPEAKER_02: I don't have enough follicles to justify a mask.
SPEAKER_02: Give me a new ball cap.
SPEAKER_02: Let's cover this.
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna get sunburned.
SPEAKER_02: But their hair, my daughter takes great care of her hair, both my daughters.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and they both have different kinds of hair.
SPEAKER_02: One's straight, one's really curly.
SPEAKER_02: And my wife is inviting them into their identity and beauty through that.
SPEAKER_02: They keep a regular appointment to cultivate that.
SPEAKER_02: And I want to share this because I didn't quite understand the deep DNA connection here.
SPEAKER_02: But this comes out of Brain in Life podcast from American Academy of Neurology, from neurologist Dr.
SPEAKER_02: Rohenina Hoffman's book, Hair Stories.
SPEAKER_02: She's writing this to women.
SPEAKER_02: It's a coffee table book, and she says this after interviewing many women on the subject: hair is a language, a shield, and a trophy.
SPEAKER_02: Hair is a construct reflecting our identity, history, femininity, personality.
SPEAKER_02: It talks about our innermost feelings of self-doubt, aging, and vanity, as well as our self-esteem.
SPEAKER_02: Hair also has a deep has deep sociological roots.
SPEAKER_02: It can be indicative of certain religious or political belief system.
SPEAKER_02: And like its genetic code, it is complicated and touches our very core.
SPEAKER_02: Mary in this moment offers her beauty, her hair, her trophy, and identity in worship.
SPEAKER_02: The most core thing about her, she uses as a lavish gift to her king.
SPEAKER_02: She's in total obedience to her spirit to worship the Son of Man in this way.
SPEAKER_02: Mary offers her deepest humility, love, and affection, her whole heart in this worship.
SPEAKER_02: Mary's worship is of the most utmost personal nature.
SPEAKER_02: Her connection to her Savior's life and coming death is so very personal, she gets it.
SPEAKER_02: She understands what's coming ahead in the days ahead for Jesus, and she offers him pure ministry.
SPEAKER_02: Mary understood that the presence of God was no longer dwelling in the temple, but walking among them as a man in the flesh, offering himself, offering his kingdom, offering his healing, his miracles.
SPEAKER_02: She just raised her brother from the dead just like days before, church.
SPEAKER_02: She understands that.
SPEAKER_02: The Son of God sitting in front of her.
SPEAKER_02: She understood that they were hosting the presence of God in that home, and she gave her best worship with that revelation.
SPEAKER_02: Mary received this revelation from Jesus the first visit back in Luke 10, if you recall, there's a sweet little story that's happening here.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus shows up on the scene to have dinner with Lazarus, her and her sister Mary.
SPEAKER_02: And Martha comes up out of the scene.
SPEAKER_02: Martha, but Martha was distracted by the big dinner.
SPEAKER_02: She was preparing.
SPEAKER_02: She came to Jesus and said, Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister sits here while I do all the work?
SPEAKER_02: Tell her to come and help me.
SPEAKER_02: But the Lord said to her, My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details.
SPEAKER_02: And there is only one thing worth being concerned about.
SPEAKER_02: Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken from her.
SPEAKER_02: Now you would have thought that that would have connected somewhere.
SPEAKER_02: But as we just picked up in John 12, Martha's serving again.
SPEAKER_02: And where's Mary?
SPEAKER_02: At the foot of Jesus again.
SPEAKER_02: Because from the moment that he walked into her world, she understood and knew this man was the Son of God, the Messiah, and he was bringing healing and revelation into the world.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go a little bit deeper into what Mary is modeling.
SPEAKER_02: And when Jesus connected this for me, I was just blown away.
SPEAKER_02: It was just, it was powerful.
SPEAKER_02: Mary's modeling what to do with the treasure and talent God's given her.
SPEAKER_02: She's being faithful by investing her talent back into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: Hello, there's a parable out there that she probably heard Jesus, she might have been in the crowd that day, talking about the guy who got one talent, two, and five.
SPEAKER_02: Well, we know one guy buries it and then he's cast out in utter darkness because he's not a good steward of that talent of the treasure.
SPEAKER_02: She takes all the treasure of her life and buries it at the foot of Jesus, investing it into the kingdom, into the king.
SPEAKER_02: She's preparing her Messiah with a lavish gift of burial preparation truly worthy of a king.
SPEAKER_02: Looking into the Gospel of Matthew for another record of the same account, we have to notice how Jesus immortalizes Mary's actions in the annals of our history.
SPEAKER_02: Matthew 26, 13, he's saying in that same moment, assuredly, he's talking to the audience that's present at that dinner.
SPEAKER_02: Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus has now connected her to the story of his life, the gospel of his life, his death, his resurrection that's soon to come.
SPEAKER_02: But he's talking about the miracles that he's performed, walking earth as the Son of God.
SPEAKER_02: And he said, wherever I'm talked about, you will remember this woman's journey, this woman's story, this woman's ministry and worship to me as well.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus connects the legacy of his gospel, the story of his life and sacrifice to her and her worship in this moment.
SPEAKER_02: She will be remembered for all time, connected to her ministry to Christ and his ministry to us.
SPEAKER_02: And what else is unlocked here?
SPEAKER_02: You see the beauty of the Beatitudes, Matthew 5, 6.
SPEAKER_02: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
SPEAKER_02: There's not a greater picture in the New Testament in my mind, maybe other than Zacchaeus, who's hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: She empties out her most valuable possession so that she can be filled with his kingdom, his presence, his love, his grace.
SPEAKER_02: And she is filled.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus instantly refills her sacrifice and treasure with an eternal blessing.
SPEAKER_02: She is filled by him with righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: Such a beautiful moment.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus is honoring his promise from that Beatitude teaching.
SPEAKER_02: Mary is living out that message in that very moment.
SPEAKER_02: Do we hunger and thirst for his righteousness in this kind of way?
SPEAKER_02: What kind of worship are we bringing?
SPEAKER_02: Through the beauty of his gospel, we see these women bringing such a beautiful expression of complete and utter devotion.
SPEAKER_02: Pushing past their own humility, their own perspective, their own fear of man, they bring worship to God in such a pure form that it cannot go unrecognized.
SPEAKER_02: This kind of worship transcends whether you're a man or a woman today, it's an example about what kind of heart we bring to the Father, the King of Kings, who would go.
SPEAKER_02: And what's interesting to me is that if it wasn't for the horrific splendor of the cross, the terror that's locked up inside of Calvary, Mary's worship in that moment would have seemed opulent.
SPEAKER_02: It would have seemed out of control, it would have seen over the top.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't understand the foreshadowing that was coming, but she got it.
SPEAKER_02: She's like, I want to bring, I want to bring a gift worthy of a king.
SPEAKER_02: Do we bring worship worthy of a king?
SPEAKER_02: Church.
SPEAKER_02: To put it in relationship, because I understand men may not understand the hair analogy here, but what Mary offered and what the sinful woman offered Jesus is comparable to us where we find our identity, maybe in our physical status.
SPEAKER_02: Are we courageous?
SPEAKER_02: Do we have strength?
SPEAKER_02: What's our physical body look like?
SPEAKER_02: Can we endure?
SPEAKER_02: Are we bringing all that to God in a sacrificial humble way?
SPEAKER_02: Or do we stand in that identity?
SPEAKER_02: Hold it for ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: We hold back.
SPEAKER_02: God wants it all.
SPEAKER_02: And the blessing and the richness that comes from that kind of sacrifice is eternal.
SPEAKER_02: Church, I want to say when I stand before the Father, that I recognize Jesus Christ in front of man.
SPEAKER_02: So that he can say, Dad, that's my son.
SPEAKER_02: That's our son.
SPEAKER_02: He loved us.
SPEAKER_02: He praised us with everything in him.
SPEAKER_02: So whatever worship is in your heart and in your mouth and in your breath, I pray that you would release it today.
SPEAKER_02: And I just want to close this message with this to you right now.
SPEAKER_02: Today, whether your relationship with your mom is cherished or complicated, give thanks to God for her and her life.
SPEAKER_02: It is because of her you have life, and your life has created beautiful moments for you and others around you.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you have had the opportunity to give life to others.
SPEAKER_02: Today, precious saints, you are alive and breathing, able to give that breath as worship to God, your creator, who made you in his image, who works all things for his glory and your good.
SPEAKER_02: So with a full heart, I say thank you, Mom.
SPEAKER_02: I love you.
SPEAKER_02: Happy Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.