SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
SPEAKER_00: Have you thought this morning about how put together we all appear this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Have a nice platform of everything arranged well, musicians who all seem ready to lead us in worship, all prepared, all practiced up.
SPEAKER_00: Take a look around you.
SPEAKER_00: Seriously, take a look.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody looks put together, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: Most of us have showered this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We're dressed nicely.
SPEAKER_00: But if all we do is look, we don't see what God sees.
SPEAKER_00: If all we do is look at each other and we consider appearances, we don't see what can be seen from heaven's view.
SPEAKER_00: So for example, we don't see that there are saints here this morning who have walked with Jesus far longer than some of us have been alive.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see that there are older saints among us who came to follow Jesus later in life and so are still young Christians.
SPEAKER_00: To take a different perspective, we don't see that some among us this morning had to think hard and long about whether or not to put in the energy to actually get ready and come to this room to worship together because of how much pain they're in.
SPEAKER_00: And you might never hear about it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see that some might be really struggling with grief this morning because it's the anniversary of the loss of a loved one.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see that one or two of us, because percentage-wise that might be all it is, one or two of us got up early this morning and read our Bibles and prayed and was well prepared to worship.
SPEAKER_00: We also don't see that the majority of us probably have already fought and battled with sin and have lost the battle this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see things from heaven's view very often, do we?
SPEAKER_00: We could go on and on describing all of those different things that make up the people here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: From that way of speaking, we are a very diverse group of people.
SPEAKER_00: We gather here this morning with all of our different appearances, yes, but more than that, when we dig underneath the surface and we open us up a little bit, each of us is very different.
SPEAKER_00: We are struggling with different things.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we are excited about different things.
SPEAKER_00: Some are bearing great weights while others are free with great joy.
SPEAKER_00: But we all join together this morning because we know that while our situations are different, Jesus is still worthy of all of our worship.
SPEAKER_00: You may not have actually thought through those words, but you are here this morning because, in some sense, you agree that we want to hear God speak to us from his word.
SPEAKER_00: You agree that we want to sing his praises together.
SPEAKER_00: You you agree that we want to walk with him.
SPEAKER_00: You you agree that we want healing, we want to see Jesus, we believe that he is worthy of all of this and more.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a good place for you.
SPEAKER_00: This is a great place for you.
SPEAKER_00: God knows your needs.
SPEAKER_00: You may not be comfortable sharing all of the depths of your being this morning, but there is someone who knows.
SPEAKER_00: God knows your hurts, He knows your longings, He knows your cares, He knows your joys.
SPEAKER_00: He rejoices with you and He mourns with you.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to do that too.
SPEAKER_00: We want to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, and we would love to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_00: But from heaven's view, God longs to lead you to Himself where there is eternal joy and there is complete fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, we know.
SPEAKER_00: We know that there are some who want nothing of that kind of God.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want that kind of God because that feels intrusive.
SPEAKER_00: That feels out of control rather than submit to the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They want what they want, and so they want to be their own God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the world we live in.
SPEAKER_00: And this room this morning is a microcosm of the world.
SPEAKER_00: We represent the world this morning with all of its brokenness, with all of its joys, with all of its longings, and with all of its hurts and pains, and probably even with all of its suspicion about God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the same world in which the Lord Jesus lived and served and died.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same world we find in Matthew chapter 26.
SPEAKER_00: If you would take your Bible with me and open it to Matthew's gospel, we are nearing the end of our study of Matthew's gospel record, where we hear of the last days of the Lord's earthly life.
SPEAKER_00: This chapter begins, the last section of Matthew, which is comprised of about the last two or three days of the Lord's life.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew reminds us of that with a transition sentence at the beginning of the chapter, and it moves us from the long speech that Jesus gave to his disciples in Matthew 24 and 25 into this perspective that thinks deeply and richly about the last hours of the Lord's life by reminding us of what is coming.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 26.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read verses 1 through 13, if you would follow along with me.
SPEAKER_00: Says, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.
SPEAKER_00: But they said, Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper.
SPEAKER_00: And a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table.
SPEAKER_00: And when the disciples saw it, by the way, I'm going to pause there for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: One of the Gospels says that it's Judas who says this.
SPEAKER_00: Another of the gospels says it's a handful of the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew throws everybody under the bus.
SPEAKER_00: Because we all need to be thrown under the bus, right?
SPEAKER_00: But they said, sorry, the disciples saw it and they were indignant, saying, Why this waste?
SPEAKER_00: This could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, Why do you trouble the woman?
SPEAKER_00: She has done a beautiful thing to me.
SPEAKER_00: A good thing, literally.
SPEAKER_00: For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.
SPEAKER_00: In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial.
SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This is Matthew's narrative of the last three days or so of Passion Week.
SPEAKER_00: So verses one and two introduce this section of the narrative.
SPEAKER_00: And verses three through thirteen is the first unit of this last section from chapter 26 to chapter 28.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew's drilling down to the most intense moments of the Lord's life.
SPEAKER_00: But he also reminds us that we've arrived at the moment that he's been leading us to all along.
SPEAKER_00: So, for example, in chapter 16, verse 21, he told the disciples, listen, we're coming to the point where we're going to Jerusalem, and I'm going to be handed over to the chief priests and the elders, and they're going to beat me, and they're going to hang me on a cross, and I'm going to die.
SPEAKER_00: Then they said that again in chapter 17, verse 22, and again in chapter 20, verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: And so now in chapter 26, Matthew tells us, we've arrived.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that I've been telling you from the very first moments of this book is now here.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus brings us to that climactic portion of the account with, you know.
SPEAKER_00: You know.
SPEAKER_00: It's two more days until the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: At the Passover, the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Ready or not, here it comes.
SPEAKER_00: I should have counted the number of days until Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: Ready or not, it's coming.
SPEAKER_00: Ready or not, winter's coming.
SPEAKER_00: You know this, right?
SPEAKER_00: There are things about the calendar that you know.
SPEAKER_00: But this is so ironic because the disciples know the Jewish calendar.
SPEAKER_00: They've grown up in the Jewish system of religion.
SPEAKER_00: They know when Passover is, they know that great moment of the Jewish feast.
SPEAKER_00: They've lived with it all their lives, and they've been in Jerusalem already for three to four days because of the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: But during this memorial of the Lamb slain for the redemption of Israel, the Lamb of God would be killed to redeem all of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice that the quotation marks are at the end of verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Because verse 3 shifts to a description of something else that's happening.
SPEAKER_00: Sort of like, meanwhile, shift scenes to the palace of the high priest.
SPEAKER_00: After the change of pace introduction, so Jesus moves from this end times discussion with his disciples in chapter 25.
SPEAKER_00: Now we change the pace to the Passover week.
SPEAKER_00: Now Matthew lays out two connected events.
SPEAKER_00: One event is Jewish leaders, the elite, in the palace, and the other is at the home belonging to someone known as Simon the Leper.
SPEAKER_00: The events themselves are pretty clear.
SPEAKER_00: One group orchestrates a murder.
SPEAKER_00: The other group loves Jesus, not knowing that he's preparing for his death.
SPEAKER_00: One group involves clandestine interactions, while the other involves griping with a contrast of moving devotion.
SPEAKER_00: That gets us to the two ways I want us to think about this account for the rest of our time.
SPEAKER_00: Let's consider the cast of characters that's here.
SPEAKER_00: From heaven's view.
SPEAKER_00: But as we do that, we're going to see that this really isn't about the cast of characters so much as it is about the conduct of Christ, the character of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So look with me first at the cast of characters.
SPEAKER_00: This cast of characters, just like all of us gathered together this morning, is a representation of reality.
SPEAKER_00: There are various kinds of people gathered together, but if we dig a little bit underneath the surface, they are very different and they represent very different situations.
SPEAKER_00: As God would describe the differences among us this morning, he has given us a picture of people's lives in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: Now the groups here are some distance apart.
SPEAKER_00: But the two groups are all gathered because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Who are these characters?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first we have the chief priests and the elders.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew records for us that these leaders, these religious, spiritual, outfront leading the people, leaders, are deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to spend the rest of our time just preaching on that.
SPEAKER_00: I spent about three hours this week on a rabbit trail on that point.
SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: So when your Bible says in the ESV that they plotted together in verse 4 in order to arrest Jesus by stealth, that stealth word literally is by deceit.
SPEAKER_00: You might say trickery if you have a different translation.
SPEAKER_00: They were being deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: So not only were they seeking to murder Jesus, they were wanting to do that through their own inner character of deceit.
SPEAKER_00: They're cowardly and they're passive aggressive in their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Luke tells us that they were afraid of the people.
SPEAKER_00: They were afraid of the crowds of the common Jewish people present in the hundreds of thousands at Passover rising up against them if they did this publicly.
SPEAKER_00: And so in their fear, they are deceitfully seeking to kill Jesus without anyone knowing.
SPEAKER_00: This might be an allusion to Psalm 52.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 52, verses 1 through 4, David says, Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man?
SPEAKER_00: The steadfast love of the Lord endures all the day, but your tongue plots destruction like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it's the same word used here for deceit.
SPEAKER_00: Psalmist goes on You love evil more than good and lying more than speaking what is right.
SPEAKER_00: You love all the words that devour, O deceitful tongue.
SPEAKER_00: And here is Jesus, the recipient of that deceit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in contrast to the chief priests and the elders, our second character is Simon the leper, who's welcoming.
SPEAKER_00: They're in his home.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this group at the palace working deceit, but in Bethany, we're in the house of Simon the Leper.
SPEAKER_00: If you know your Bible, you will probably remember that Bethany is the place where Lazarus and his sisters live.
SPEAKER_00: So they're not at Lazarus' house.
SPEAKER_00: They're at Simon's house.
SPEAKER_00: And not just Simon's house, but Simon the leper's house.
SPEAKER_00: And that's problematic.
SPEAKER_00: Because according to Leviticus chapter 13, Leviticus 13 says, the leprous person who has a disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, unclean, unclean, and he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease.
SPEAKER_00: He is unclean, he shall live alone, and his dwelling shall be outside the camp.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this is not the place for a respectable person to be.
SPEAKER_00: That may very well be that Jesus has healed Simon from his disease.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, Simon is still known as what?
SPEAKER_00: The leper.
SPEAKER_00: So sort of like we would we would assign a, for better or for worse, we would we would assign a quality to someone who has been incarcerated for most of their life.
SPEAKER_00: They're the convict.
SPEAKER_00: And that follows them all of their life.
SPEAKER_00: In much the same way, there is at the best a stigma involved with Simon.
SPEAKER_00: He is known as the leper.
SPEAKER_00: Now, throughout church history, he has traditionally been viewed as having been healed by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, he has this burden that he cannot be rid of.
SPEAKER_00: Or do you see in Jesus what the chief priests and the elders saw?
SPEAKER_00: It's a fascinating post-biblical account.
SPEAKER_00: If you are familiar with books that were written in the first century that are called Pseudopigrapha, that is, we don't know who the author was.
SPEAKER_00: They were written in a false name.
SPEAKER_00: Baruch is Jeremiah's scribe in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: But we know it wasn't that Baruch, if his name really was Baruch, because this book was written after 70 AD, after the destruction of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Fascinating little book.
SPEAKER_00: And it records that when Jewish lepers would show themselves to the priests for a clean bill of health.
SPEAKER_00: That was what the law of Moses required.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus told some lepers to do.
SPEAKER_00: When he cleansed them, he said, Go and show yourself to the priests according to the law of Moses, so that you can receive a clean bill of health and be cleansed.
SPEAKER_00: The stigma will be gone.
SPEAKER_00: You've been clean.
SPEAKER_00: So 2 Baruch says that when that starts happening, it's a sign, it's a sign to the Jewish people that the one who makes lepers clean has arrived.
SPEAKER_00: The king who has healing in his hands has arrived.
SPEAKER_00: And where is he?
SPEAKER_00: He's not in the palace with the spiritual leaders.
SPEAKER_00: He's in the home of the leper.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of receiving Jesus as Simon did, the chief priest conspired.
SPEAKER_00: To kill him.
SPEAKER_00: Our third group of characters is the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, the longest term ones, three and a half years or so, have been walking with Jesus, following Jesus, learning from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They've been sent out on mission trips by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They've healed people by the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: They've cast out demons.
SPEAKER_00: They've learned how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: They've learned how to lead as Jesus leads.
SPEAKER_00: They've had successes.
SPEAKER_00: They've had failures.
SPEAKER_00: By now they ought to be ready to lead as Joshua led Israel after Moses did.
SPEAKER_00: But what do we see?
SPEAKER_00: They're indignant.
SPEAKER_00: And they're oblivious.
SPEAKER_00: They don't get it.
SPEAKER_00: They don't get it, and as a result, they condemn the woman.
SPEAKER_00: Now the text says that they were indignant.
SPEAKER_00: They were mad.
SPEAKER_00: Why were they mad?
SPEAKER_00: Because they thought the right thing to do was to sell this product, to take the proceeds, and to help the poor.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't see past that view in front of them to understand that here's a woman who is giving her most precious possession because Jesus is worthy of her worship.
SPEAKER_00: They viewed the woman's actions as foolish and wasteful.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus viewed her actions as honorable and even incorporated them into the sovereign work of God.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples were focused on the value and the good it could do.
SPEAKER_00: Their focus is let's benefit the poor, while the woman is intent on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples were oblivious to the woman's intentions, focusing only on their own perceptions.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit earlier I asked you to literally look around.
SPEAKER_00: Did you reach any conclusions about your perceptions?
SPEAKER_00: And were they right?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it so easy as sinful human beings to have perceptions of other people and to reach conclusions about other people just on what we see?
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe what you heard through the grapevine?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe someone is just standing up and singing along with us, but there's just no joy in their face.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, what's wrong with that person?
SPEAKER_00: Don't they know Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Don't they know this is to be a praise song?
SPEAKER_00: And so we've judged them, right?
SPEAKER_00: Without really knowing that they fought Satan all morning long.
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's survival for them.
SPEAKER_00: Who received the correction in this account?
SPEAKER_00: Not the woman, but the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, leave her alone.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you ought to know better by now.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: We can name the twelve disciples.
SPEAKER_00: We can name the twelve disciples, we we know their names, we we can identify their attitudes, we can identify Jesus' correction to them, and those elements remain permanently etched in the written word of God to their dishonor.
SPEAKER_00: Their sin remains forever recorded in Holy Scripture, but the woman remains unnamed in her honor because she honored Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You think, well, why isn't an honor that she's unnamed?
SPEAKER_00: Listen, my friends, the greatest honor that you can ever have is to make sure that Jesus receives the greatest glory.
SPEAKER_00: When you make life and eternity all about him, that is your greatest honor.
SPEAKER_00: The woman remains unnamed because she honors Jesus and she is our next character.
SPEAKER_00: This unnamed woman gives up her wealth so that she might honor Jesus for a few moments.
SPEAKER_00: This is a great treasure.
SPEAKER_00: The words that Matthew uses here imply something that is extremely expensive, very, very costly.
SPEAKER_00: This is a jar that is worth a year's wages.
SPEAKER_00: Mark tells us it's 300 denarii, about a year's wages.
SPEAKER_00: So it's about a 12-ounce jar, and it's worth in the neighborhood of$30,000 to$50,000.
SPEAKER_00: You break the top off of it, and you dump it out on Jesus' head.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do a dumb thing like that?
SPEAKER_00: That's the disciples, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're thinking that it's wasteful, it's foolish, but the woman is saying, No, no, I love my Jesus enough that I am willing to give all that I have to pour this on his head.
SPEAKER_00: Her service is an honor of the Messiah, and her heart is humbled.
SPEAKER_00: She will be remembered forever, but is given no name.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because this is not about the cast of characters, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: This is about the Lord Jesus, who's about to die.
SPEAKER_00: This is about the King in all of his glory.
SPEAKER_00: And there are 12 disciples who can't see the glory.
SPEAKER_00: But there's an unnamed woman who can.
SPEAKER_00: This is gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I say to you, wherever this gospel in verse 13 is proclaimed, what?
SPEAKER_00: What gospel?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's good news.
SPEAKER_00: What good news?
SPEAKER_00: We have to go back to verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: The king is going to be handed over.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to be delivered up to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: That is your good news.
SPEAKER_00: And wherever that good news is proclaimed, Jesus says, what this woman has done for me will be told forever to honor her because she honored me.
SPEAKER_00: The good news, her humble honoring of Jesus by preparing him for his burial, is contrasted starkly with the Jewish leaders, the deceitful leaders of religion and society.
SPEAKER_00: But it parallels Simon offering his home.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's these disciples who really don't know what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: We have leaders who ought to be leading, but instead they're deceiving.
SPEAKER_00: We have disciples who ought to be learning to lead, but who are oblivious.
SPEAKER_00: And the only ones who really know what's going on are the outcast and the lady who thinks it's okay to burn$50,000.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what that tells us?
SPEAKER_00: It's not about the cast of characters.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the one who's worthy.
SPEAKER_00: See, this is Matthew's way of warning the early church.
SPEAKER_00: That early church that was a cast of characters as diverse as those in this account.
SPEAKER_00: An early church that's as diverse as we are this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew's asking, where do we fit?
SPEAKER_00: Are we among those who are deceitful and who oppose Christ, who oppose God's purpose?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we those who receive Jesus with welcoming hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, we come to church and we receive Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Well, are you those disciples, those Christians who can't even see the value of a woman giving her most precious possession away to honor Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Or are you the unnamed woman whose story is told forever in honor of her Savior?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the Savior here, who is worthy of all honor.
SPEAKER_00: He is the last of our cast of characters.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he is least, but because he's the most significant.
SPEAKER_00: Here is Jesus, the Messiah, preparing to die.
SPEAKER_00: Simon is there saying, This is great.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is in my home.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the disciples thinking, yeah, this is just another one of those situations, somebody going crazy for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is there knowing.
SPEAKER_00: There's two days until the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: There's two days until I must be the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing all.
SPEAKER_00: Having planned it all, the sovereign Christ is now living it out.
SPEAKER_00: Here is the shepherd correcting his sheep.
SPEAKER_00: Those sheep that in a few mere hours will be scattered when the shepherd is struck.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Zechariah said would happen, and that's what will happen.
SPEAKER_00: Shepherd correcting his sheep.
SPEAKER_00: The shepherd receiving honor fit for a king.
SPEAKER_00: Israel's God in the flesh about to be handed over and crucified.
SPEAKER_00: He's preparing to die as a lamb at the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we see of him?
SPEAKER_00: I have here in my outline that our next section is the conduct of the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's better to think of this as the character of the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The character of the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is worthy of worship.
SPEAKER_00: How do we see that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, he's here at the home of Simon the Leper, preparing his closest friends and followers for his death.
SPEAKER_00: They're oblivious.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over and over again, they've been told this is what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to Jerusalem and this is going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And they're okay.
SPEAKER_00: We've never experienced anything like this before.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, we're not quite sure you're right in the head because the king doesn't die.
SPEAKER_00: The king conquers Rome and gets rid of them.
SPEAKER_00: But okay, we'll go along with you.
SPEAKER_00: His closest friends and followers are in holiday mode.
SPEAKER_00: They're thinking ahead to the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, we get to celebrate the feast.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're going to sacrifice the lamb.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to remember the Exodus from Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to remember God's redemption.
SPEAKER_00: But we get to celebrate together, together, and they don't realize that this Passover will be unlike anything anyone has ever experienced.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't realize that Jesus is preparing them for that.
SPEAKER_00: They don't realize what Jesus said in chapter 20, verse 28, that even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
SPEAKER_00: They don't see that being lived out.
SPEAKER_00: They perceived him as the Messiah, they see him as their king, and the anticipated king is going to be a victorious warrior, not a murdered peasant.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why would Jesus work so hard to prepare others for his death?
SPEAKER_00: Their king's going to die.
SPEAKER_00: So is he comforting them by saying, I'm going to be handed over and crucified?
SPEAKER_00: It's a strange way to comfort people.
SPEAKER_00: Is it to strengthen them for the process?
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: If that's the case, it doesn't work out very well because they all left him.
SPEAKER_00: Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter.
SPEAKER_00: Only a few women really stuck with him all the way through it.
SPEAKER_00: No, I think he's reminding them of God's program so that they're not as surprised as they might be.
SPEAKER_00: But even more, he's reminding them that he's preparing them for after his death.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember how later on, after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, all of a sudden the disciples start remembering things?
SPEAKER_00: You see over and over again, oh yeah, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: We remember when Jesus said this.
SPEAKER_00: Now this all starts to make sense.
SPEAKER_00: Afterwards, they could see that this was God's purpose.
SPEAKER_00: So, at least in part, Jesus spoke of his impending death many times to prepare a foundation in the disciples' minds by teaching them that this was the purpose and the plan of God, and it cannot be thwarted.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, that plan and purpose of God is inconceivable.
SPEAKER_00: The Son of Man, God in the flesh, would be delivered up to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I hate grammar.
SPEAKER_00: You know this?
SPEAKER_00: No, I always hate grammar.
SPEAKER_00: I always hate grammar.
SPEAKER_00: But it's important here.
SPEAKER_00: In verse verse um, verse two, when it says the Son of Man will be delivered up, it's a passive form of the verb, which means it happens to you.
SPEAKER_00: The action of the verb happens to the person.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is handed up.
SPEAKER_00: We might think that that, oh, maybe that's Judas, because Judas comes next.
SPEAKER_00: Judas is handing them up, and that would make sense.
SPEAKER_00: But most likely this is a divine passive where this points to the plan and the purpose of the Godhead in eternity past to redeem God's people.
SPEAKER_00: That in eternity past, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit determined that God the Son would be the Passover Lamb, and to be the Passover Lamb, God the Son would have to be handed over by the Godhead to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: You don't see that if you're a disciple.
SPEAKER_00: You only see that from heaven's view.
SPEAKER_00: This hints at the plan of God in eternity past to be the perfect Passover lamb, handed over to the chief priest to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is what Peter says later on in Acts chapter 2, beginning in verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: He's preaching his sermon and he says, Men of Israel, all these hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Jerusalem at the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Hear these words.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God of mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.
SPEAKER_00: As you yourselves know, you are without excuse.
SPEAKER_00: This Jesus delivered up.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: According to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: Yet human beings are still responsible for you crucified and killed.
SPEAKER_00: You killed him by the hands of lawless men.
SPEAKER_00: But God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible.
SPEAKER_00: It was not possible for the Son of God to be held by death.
SPEAKER_00: From the human, sinful human perspective, the Jewish leaders were fighting against God's program of Jesus being the promised Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: By killing him, they rejected God's purpose.
SPEAKER_00: But what did God do?
SPEAKER_00: God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it's not possible.
SPEAKER_00: That shows us that what Jesus is doing here is incorporating sinful people into the divine plan to accomplish his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Listen again to Acts 2.23.
SPEAKER_00: This Jesus, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men, but that comes after the foreordained purpose of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's this using sinful people to accomplish the divine plan.
SPEAKER_00: And in Matthew 26, verses 3, 4, and 5, we see that action.
SPEAKER_00: The chief priests and the elders are plotting together, and notice what they did.
SPEAKER_00: Four things.
SPEAKER_00: They plotted to arrest him without reason.
SPEAKER_00: They plotted to arrest him by deceit.
SPEAKER_00: They plotted to please people rather than God.
SPEAKER_00: And they plotted to kill.
SPEAKER_00: As part of the triune Godhead, Emmanuel, Jesus prepares to die at the hands of sinful men.
SPEAKER_00: How ironic is it that the one whom Paul says to the church at Colossae holds all things together by the words of his power, and that he made all things with his fingertips is going to be handed over to die at the hands of the ones he made.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't surprise us.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's book begins with Jesus avoiding death at the hand of Herod, and now it's driving forward to that very thing taking place.
SPEAKER_00: It should not surprise us because Proverbs 16:4 says, Yahweh made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven's view shows us what's happening in the mind of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He knows even as that unnamed woman brings out this jar, he knows that at that very moment deceit is taking place to hang him upon a tree.
SPEAKER_00: And he knows that this woman, breaking this jar and pouring it on his head, will prepare him for burial.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, perhaps most astounding of all from our perspectives is that he ministers to and receives the worship of outcasts.
SPEAKER_00: This is just a few days, two days before Jesus' last Passover meal with his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: The time until his death can realistically be counted in hours.
SPEAKER_00: And what is Jesus doing?
SPEAKER_00: He's staying in the small village of Bethany outside of Jerusalem, not that unusual, but he has friends there, but he's not.
SPEAKER_00: Not even at his friend's house, he's at Simon's house.
SPEAKER_00: Simon, the leper.
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, that sounds almost normal to us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus needed a place to stay.
SPEAKER_00: Bethany was quiet.
SPEAKER_00: But we're told that he's at the house of Simon when he could be at Lazarus's.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are cultural faux pas.
SPEAKER_00: Things you just you just don't do.
SPEAKER_00: Especially if you're a respectable teacher.
SPEAKER_00: But this, this is beyond imagination.
SPEAKER_00: This is no touching of a leper.
SPEAKER_00: That alone brought with it a consequence of being unclean before God for many days.
SPEAKER_00: But here, Jesus is in the home of a leper, eating with a leper, or at least a former leper, and at the very least, this carries a social stigma of having associated closely with a social outcast, and then a woman comes and pours money on his head.
SPEAKER_00: From the disciples' perspective.
SPEAKER_00: This is just outrageous.
SPEAKER_00: Just days before his death, Jesus is not out on the town enjoying himself.
SPEAKER_00: He's not fulfilling his bucket list.
SPEAKER_00: He knows his execution is near and he's ministering to his social outcasts.
SPEAKER_00: Even here, the purpose of God cannot be thwarted.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came not to be served, but to serve.
SPEAKER_00: And in that, some recognize this is not a normal human being.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, in preparing to die, receives the worship of an unnamed woman.
SPEAKER_00: She comes up to Jesus with a flask made of alabaster.
SPEAKER_00: It's a workable material made from minerals.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the flask, though, that made this special.
SPEAKER_00: It was what it was filled with.
SPEAKER_00: It's a word here that indicates that what was inside this little flask was the oil of myrrh.
SPEAKER_00: Very, very expensive.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how she came to possess it.
SPEAKER_00: Is it a family heirloom?
SPEAKER_00: Was it part of her dowry?
SPEAKER_00: Was it something that she earned?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Is this a wealthy home?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: All we know is that she possesses it.
SPEAKER_00: And as the wise men at Jesus' birth came to offer him the rich gifts of a king.
SPEAKER_00: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
SPEAKER_00: Now at his death, an unnamed woman comes and offers us her worship.
SPEAKER_00: Rich gifts fit for a king.
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Pouring oil on the head was a social custom.
SPEAKER_00: If you respected a person, you would often pour a little bit of oil on their head as they came into your home.
SPEAKER_00: It's most notably used for priests or special teachers.
SPEAKER_00: But it has a biblical precedent too.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, the most common use of anointing oil, pouring oil on the head was for anointing a priest or a king as they were set apart for service.
SPEAKER_00: And that act demonstrated that they were divinely approved for their position.
SPEAKER_00: They were recognized by God for that position.
SPEAKER_00: And so here, if that same sentiment is here, Matthew is showing us that this woman is recognizing and symbolically anointing Jesus as the promised one, the Messiah King set apart for God for that position, and maybe even hinting that he is going to be the one set apart for sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And underlying all of this is worship.
SPEAKER_00: She sees Jesus as worthy of worship.
SPEAKER_00: Our word for worship means worth.
SPEAKER_00: Comes in the English language from worth, worthiness.
SPEAKER_00: It is worth something.
SPEAKER_00: There's inherent value or worth in something or someone that causes you to act in a certain way or to do something, to think something.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why we gather in all of our differences, all of our variations to worship our God.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that he is worth us gathering together, setting apart our time, coming and hearing from him and responding to him in praise and thanksgiving and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: The woman believes that Jesus is worthy of this expensive act.
SPEAKER_00: And in pouring out that oil, she says, You are worthy of this gift.
SPEAKER_00: You have to wonder if we would be willing to give such a gift.
SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus worth that to us?
SPEAKER_00: The dollar amount doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: You can put in there whatever you want, whatever object it is, and just say, is your view of Jesus that high?
SPEAKER_00: She sees.
SPEAKER_00: She knows that myrrh as a perfume and an oil is not going to last that long.
SPEAKER_00: She probably doesn't even understand what Jesus is meaning when he says she's going to she's preparing me for burial.
SPEAKER_00: She's anointing me so that the the smell of the myrrh is going to help offset the smell of decay.
SPEAKER_00: She just thinks I love Jesus enough to do this.
SPEAKER_00: How appropriate is that?
SPEAKER_00: Hasn't Jesus said that the first will be last?
SPEAKER_00: And the last will be first?
SPEAKER_00: Can't help but think that this unnamed woman will be the one closest to the throne in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody will be looking and saying, There she is.
SPEAKER_00: And you know why she'll be there?
SPEAKER_00: Not because she gave up the most costly thing.
SPEAKER_00: But because she saw Jesus as worthy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus declares she will be remembered forever as the woman without a name who worshipped with all she had.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not about the woman, is it?
SPEAKER_00: It's about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew starts out by saying, two more days.
SPEAKER_00: And the Passover lamb will be sacrificed.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus knows that after he is the Passover lamb, he will be assigned a burial spot with the rich.
SPEAKER_00: And he knows that what this woman has done in worship is part of God's purpose.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans wouldn't give a crucified man a burial and toss him out in the dump.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish leaders, they're not about to lift a finger for Jesus unless it's to help him up on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The act of worship by an unnamed woman helps prepare Jesus' body for burial.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure she didn't have that purpose in mind when she poured the oil on Jesus' head.
SPEAKER_00: But the purpose of God will not be thwarted, will it?
SPEAKER_00: From our viewpoint, we see a handful of diverse people in various situations, but Matthew intends to show us heaven's view, where each person is shown responding to the truth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We see history moving toward the goal and the intent of God, from the manner of death to the means of death at the hands of sinful men to the worshipful devotion of an unnamed woman.
SPEAKER_00: That ought to drive our worshipful response and worship because it was that plan and that purpose of God by which we are saved.
SPEAKER_00: No matter our reason for gathering, we are to see Jesus as worthy of worship.
SPEAKER_00: The worship of others, and our worship as well.
SPEAKER_00: We resemble the diversity of people in this account, perhaps from even the unbelieving and unreceptive leaders to the oblivious disciples to Simon and the woman, and the ultimate question is: will we receive Jesus with the trust and worship that is due to King?
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we confess to you our failures, our failures to see you truly, genuinely as you are.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask that by your Spirit you would fill us so that we might see you and understand who you are and respond fully with the worship that is due.
SPEAKER_00: Only one who is worthy.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.