John 12
David Stockton - October 11, 2020

(Starting at 6:27)

John Chapter 12. In this story, we get to learn about Jesus getting his feet washed with oil and hair; Jesus rides a donkey like a boss; he predicts his death, and plays hide and seek. Sound fun? Let’s do it.

Before we jump in, I want to read this verse. It’s from Romans 12 (MSG), and it kind of encapsulates the whole message. It says this:

1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

This idea of consecration has been extremely heavy on my heart. Even as I got ready to preach this morning, I just felt this heaviness, this weight on me that this was such an important concept for us to grasp right now. That basically, we’re kind of stumbling into some deep, deep treasure in Christianity. So I really want to make sure that we get this right.

John Chapter 12 says this:

1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

Six days before the Passover was this feast that was practiced by Jews for a long, long time commemorating the time they were rescued from the Egyptians. There was kind of a whole lead-up to this Passover time where everyone would gather in Jerusalem. Jerusalem would overflow with people. There would be all kinds of getting together with families, these parties, all these things, as people gathered.

Then Bethany was a town just outside of Jerusalem, where Jesus and his disciples would stay, probably with Lazarus, Mary and Martha. But that is what was going on. So this is leading up to Passover. And this was the last week of Jesus’ life. This was his Passion week. So we’re culminating, coming to that moment.

Six days before that he was in Bethany where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. The last chapter, we just saw that.

2 Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served,

Of course. She was an enneagram 2, probably.

while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.

Probably an enneagram 9. You know. Kind of hanging out. Sometimes he’s dead. Sometimes he’s hanging out, not doing a lot of work.

3 Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

So here, int his moment, we’re going to learn about Mary’s heart. We’re going to learn about a consecrated heart and what it looks like. And we’re going to learn about some other types of hearts in this chapter, as well.

Mary had a consecrated heart. Mary comes to this party that’s going on in Jesus’ honor. A lot of commentaries think that this was possibly a gathering that was planned, kind of like a funeral gathering for Lazarus that was already planned. Lazarus had been dead for four days so they got together and said, “Let’s get everybody together.”

The other gospels say it’s Simon the leper. So they said, “Let’s get everybody together at his house and we’ll have this funeral for Lazarus.”

But now, because Jesus changed things a little bit, you know, and Lazarus is now alive, they said, “Well, let’s keep the gathering but let’s make it a party celebrating Jesus.”

And the other synoptic gospels say it was at Simon the leper’s house, which means that, if Simon was a leper, that he can’t be a leper anymore; otherwise he couldn’t have people at his house. So, Simon the leper was having a party for Jesus because he’s no longer a leper—probably because of Jesus. Lazarus is no longer dead because of Jesus. “Let’s invite all the people who are no longer this because of Jesus.” And they’re all gathering together to celebrate Jesus.

It was kind of a really cool moment of people. Now John has also told us that there was often a lot of division about Jesus. Some believed that he was a great teacher. Some believed he was a prophet. Some believed he was a liar or a deceiver. Some believed he was demon possessed. And some believed he was the Messiah.

Now all of these gathering are not very divided whether Jesus was a liar or telling the truth. They all know that there is something very significant about Jesus. They are either already at the place believing he is Messiah—God come in the flesh to save the world from sin and death—or they’re right on the cusp of believing that.

In the midst of this place, Mary, so stirred within herself, has either brought or has gone to get the most precious thing she owns. This extremely value thing. Now, a woman in first century Israel was probably extremely poor, has no status or value at all, is completely and utterly dependent on a father, or brother, or an uncle, some man that will be able to care for her, protect her and provide for her. So what she has here is something that was probably given to her by her father. And a lot of people think this was probably something like her dowery; this thing of value that she has that would make her someone that someone would want to marry; so that if, for some reason, a guy takes an interest in her and wants to marry her, then she would be able to give him something that would make it worth his while (besides, hopefully, love and all of that).

So what she has here is something that basically is her security. It’s her identity. It’s her future. It’s her hope for marriage. It’s all of that. And at this moment in her life, she is coming to Jesus in the midst of this crowded room and she pours it all out on Jesus’ feet. And then takes her hair and starts wiping his feet.

Now, again, in this culture, for a woman to touch a man, a woman to touch a man’s feet, a woman to touch a man’s feet with her hair is a very intimate thing. And it’s a very scandalous thing. And so all of the people in that room, Jesus included, are having to try and figure out what is the intention of Mary in this moment. And all the people in this room, you and I, trying to figure out what is the intention of Mary. There’s a spectrum. It’s anything from this is Mary kind of doing something, she’s fallen in love with Jesus and she wants Jesus to marry her. Maybe she has that thought. I don’t know.

It could also be on the other side of the spectrum, that Mary is actually saying, “You know what? I believe you are the Messiah. I am no longer at all confused about this. You raised my brother from the dead. I am giving myself completely to you. You are the man of my life. You are the one I am looking to for protection, provision. You are the one that, everything I belong to is yours. I am consecrating myself to you.” I think it’s pretty easy to say, if you look at Jesus’ response, in this and the other synoptic gospels, that it was much more along those lines of what Mary was thinking.

You can think of it a lot like maybe a nun giving her vows. The vow of chastity, poverty and obedience. Let’s look at those vows. This is basically what a nun does when they give their vows of dedicating their life to Jesus.

There’s a vow of poverty.

The vow of poverty leads a nun to imitate Jesus who for our sake became poor although he was very rich. It helps her to be poor in spirit as well as in fact, and to live a life of labor and moderation. By the vow of poverty, she gives up the right to control or benefit from personal property and commits herself to live interdependently within a community, according to its constitutions. The purpose of this vow is to free her from being fascinated by material things so she may be free to serve others.

In addition to that, there’s a vow of chastity.

The vow of chastity leads a nun to imitate Jesus who was chaste. This vow frees her from the demands of an exclusive human relationship so she can give all her love to God , and through God to all people. By the vow she promises not to marry or to engage in romantic behavior or sexual acts.

A vow of obedience also comes.

A vow of obedience leads the nun to imitate the obedience of Jesus Christ. She does this by seeking God’s will for her and obeying her lawful superiors according to the constitutions of her particular group. As a member of her religious community, she searches for the will of God, not in arbitrary commands, but in prayerful reflection and dialogue with others.

I’m not proposing here that we all become nuns because, well at least a bunch of us can’t. By I am wanting us to admire this. I’m wanting us to learn about consecration. I’m wanting us to learn about devotion. I’m wanting us to learn about worship. I’m wanting us to feel a little bit of shame at the way that we treat Jesus. And now, if Jesus was here, would we pour out the most valuable thing that we have at his feet? Or would we give him some and keep a backup plan, just in case?

What Mary did here was so beautiful, so amazing. She does this act of pure affection and scandalous extravagance, declaring that she is giving herself completely to Jesus for the rest of her life. You can almost here the songs that Jay Murphy’s been teaching us the last little while. “I am yours. I am yours. For all my days, Jesus, I am yours.” Or, “My heart will sing no other name. Jesus. Jesus.” Or the one he’s been teaching us lately, where we’re trying to figure out what moves God’s heart. “Is it a fragrance? Then I’ll pour my oil out. Is it a life laid down? Then here I give my vows. Is it a song I sing? Then here’s every melody. Just tell me what moves you, Jesus.”

And this is the cry of her heart. This is the purity of heart. She is willing one thing, and that is to be in the presence of Jesus. She sees him for who he really is. And she’s compelled to worship.

And then we go on to see a different kind of heart, verse 4:

4 But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5 “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 6 He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

This is like, what did the Bible just say? Are you serious here? John’s writing this letter, this book, probably sixty years later after this event. But did they know in the moment that Judas was helping himself? Did they find out later? I don’t know. But it’s so bizarre that he was in charge of the money and they were like, “Yeah, every once in a while he’d just take a little bit for himself.” Well get somebody else in charge of the money! Is it that hard to figure out? But obviously there’s something else going on.

But Judas, when he sees this act of absolute extravagance, pure affection and scandalous extravagance, his heart is not moved in the same way. What happens in his heart is, he sees the money, which reveals something about his heart. Though Mary had a consecrated heart, Judas had a divided heart. He loves Jesus. I really do think he did. He was following Jesus. How could you not see what Jesus did and not believe and not love Jesus and what he was about? But the problem was, it wasn’t that he didn’t love Jesus. The problem was that he loved something else, as well. He loved money. He tried to serve God and mammon, right? As Jesus said, “You cannot serve to masters. You cannot serve God and money. You will learn to love the one and hate the other.” And Judas was there when Jesus said that. And as Judas continued to foster that divided heart, to be okay with that divided heart, it ultimately led him to do a very hateful thing, as he kissed Jesus on the cheek to identify who he was so that he could be arrested and killed.

The truth is that most of us have divided hearts. I wish I could say that we’re all here with these consecrated hearts, but we have divided hearts. And we have to be very careful of these divided hearts. If we continue to allow them to be divided, it will end up causing us to love one and hate the other. It might not be money. It could be a lot of different things. Security. Could be convenience or comfort. It could be a person. These other things that we love that will become ultimate things if we’re not very careful.

Some verses to go along with that:

“You cannot serve two masters.” We talked about that.
“Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses; but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”
“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,” is what James says.

You can almost think of the songs coming out of Judas’ heart. “I just want to move your heart and get rich at the same time.” “I am yours, as long as it works out good for me. I am yours, as long as I get to hear that cha-ching.” “My heart will sing just a few names like Jesus, comfort, security, money, whatever…”

Sorry about that. I’m glad you laughed, because I told my wife that last night and she said, “Do people laugh when you say things like that?” I was like, “Sometimes.” But there you go. I forgot to do that first servicer, too, so you guys are lucky. But don’t come to middle service anymore. Come to first service, there’s just way more room there. Actually, there’s not room anywhere anymore, so just do what you want. Just don’t invite anybody to come with you. No. Do that too. See the balcony? There’s room up there. It’s awesome. Anyway, that’s the divided heart. We have to watch out for that.

In our church, we’ve been having this three-month long debate in our elder team. The three-month-long debate has been over the PPP. For those of you who don’t know what that is, that’s the part of the stimulus plan that the government gave to small businesses so that they could not have to let anybody go during this challenging time. So we actually applied for it, just trying to be proactive and say, “Okay, if that’s part of doing business in America, that’s wonderful.” So we applied for the PPP and we didn’t get it at first and it was like, “Okay, well now we don’t have to worry about it.” But then we did get it the second time around. Then we had it and all of us were like, “Okay, well, that’s cool and we’ll see what happens.”

But then the faithfulness of Living Streams Church, the faithfulness of God has been able to sustain us through, to where we haven’t had to tap fully into our own emergency fund. We did have to cut expenses and be real careful that way, but we haven’t really gotten to a place where we’ve needed the money from the PPP, so now we’re saying, “What do we do?” And the debate began, and we’ve wrestled it out.

Some people were like, “Well, we’re going to spend it better than the government will.” It’s like, “Well, yeah, that’s probably true.” And other people were like, “We should give it back.” Other people were like, “Come on, that’s part of doing business in America. It’s not like we’re cheating or anything.” And we just went back and forth. It was very interesting. And then on Wednesday, kind of in almost like a solemn way, we all kind of finally came to a unanimous decision and we decided to give it back.

That’s not to say everybody should do that. Everybody’s got their own situations. But it really kind of came down to this thing where some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we really want to trust in the name of the Lord our God. It just kind of settled on all of our hearts, even though there was a lot of division. Even on our elder team, it was getting a little political here and there, and it was like, “No, let’s not go there.” So we were able to root that out and make sure this wasn’t going to be a divisive thing. It was such a beautiful moment. What it felt like was we were saying, “Ultimately we want to consecrate ourselves to God alone.”That was something we could do. That was an application for us.

And then it was funny because, right after that, I go, “Well, let me tell you about all the things I think the Lord is calling us to that are going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.” And they were like, “What?” And I was like, “No, you decided.” It was just kind of funny. And next year, who knows? Maybe we’ll have a lot of challenges. Whatever. This is just where we are at right now.

Then I started to get deeper into my study and I realized that this is something that the Lord is wanting us to do as a church, and as individuals and families, to figure out what consecration means for us. So again, please don’t hear me saying that every business should give it back. I am not saying that. You get to decide between you and the Lord what you’re supposed to do. But in this place, that’s what our elders decided. And I thought it was beautiful.

So that’s the divided heart. Watch out for those divided hearts. And, one last thing on that is, who here loves money? Yes. The only honest person in the whole place. All of you love money. We all love money. We love it. It’s awesome. We’re all that Scrooge McDuck swimming in that gold coin if we could. Anybody know what that is? I loved that show when I was a kid. But it’s true. We have to root it out. We have to fight against it. We have to watch out for that.

The next thing is the jealous heart, or the insecure heart. It says in verse 9:

9 Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests…

The people of God. The pastors like me…

…made plans to kill Lazarus as well, 11 for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.

This was not a great moment in church leadership. It’s unbelievable that, in their hearts, when they witnessed what Jesus had done, when they encountered the living God, it threatened their security. It threatened their identity that everything was wrapped up in, their value was wrapped up in. So they decided the best thing to do was to kill Jesus. We already know that. But now to even kill Lazarus because of what he represents.

If we don’t consecrate our hearts to God, if we allow ourselves to take on identities that are not from the Lord, if we allow ourselves to find security in things that are not of the Lord, we’re going to find ourselves far from the Lord.

In America, we’re just like those people wanting to build that tower of Babel. They built that tower of Babel just after the flood because they had heard stories of the flood. And they thought, “If we can build this tower high enough, then maybe we can live above whatever flood might come. Maybe we can insulate ourselves from God.”

Here in America, and other parts of the world, we have to be careful that we don’t get so good at retirement, insurance, savings, all of these things that we find ourselves insulating ourselves even from God. Please don’t do anything weird with what I just said. If you want to talk it out more, I’d love to. I don’t know the answers. But I just don’t want us to insulate ourselves from God. I don’t want to miss Jesus at all.

These chief priests, the people who knew the Bible the best, who spent all of their time supposedly consecrating themselves to God—completely missed Jesus. Completely missed him. They loved to make themselves feel superior. They loved the position in society that loving God got them, and living pious gave them. They loved to be in control of what God does and doesn’t do. Their jealousy blinded their hearts from seeing God in the flesh, which was the answer to all their prayers.

If you go on, the next thing that happens is Jesus rides the donkey in Jerusalem. The triumphal entry. And the response to all of that is that they’re upset and frustrated that the people are following Jesus. They missed even that moment. And on and on it goes. And then in verse 42:

42 Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved human praise more than praise from God.

This is what describes their hearts. They’re Christians (not Christians at that time), but what describes the Christian heart today, the chief priests and leaders of the church of that day, they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. We have to be so careful of that. Remember: God doesn’t want to make us good at church. That doesn’t do anything for anybody. He wants to make us good at life. We’ve got to watch out for that type of heart.

There’s this verse that I read at the beginning and I want to conclude by reading it again to kind of help us understand what God is trying to do in our time.

Romans 12:1-2 (MSG) So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

God is trying to make us into the image of Christ. If we will give our attention and affection to him, we will find that work being done. If we give our attention and affection to something else, we’ll be formed in the way that they want to. Do you know that Instagram is trying to form you? Do you know that it is trying to get all your attention and affection? The people who run these businesses, they’ve realized that we are made to worship. And they’ve figured out how to monetize our attention. Again, I’m not saying any of those things are bad. But they’ve figured out that we are geared to give attention and affection to things. So if they can capitalize on that and monetize that, they’ll get rich. So there are all these things that are super-sophisticated, trying to get our attention and affection, trying to get our worship.

We just have to be careful that, first and foremost, we belong to God. We’ve consecrated ourselves to him.

There’s a story in the Old Testament about Moses, who has his “Mary moment.” He’s up on the mountain of God. The whole mountain is burning with fire and he’s been through the Red Sea. He’s been through the ten plagues. He’s talked with the burning bush God that is now the burning mountain God. He’s up on that mountain for forty days. No food or water that we know of. God called all the people up and all of them were scared and Moses went alone.

There, in that mountain, Moses says something. He says, “God, can I see you?” Basically, what he says is, “Show me your glory.” The word glory in the Hebrew is kabod. But it means substance. Moses says, “God, I’ve seen all the things that you can do, and it’s awesome. I’m completely following you. But is it possible for me to see you? I want your presence.”

And then he says, “God, I know you’re taking us to the Promised Land, and it sounds great.” But he says, “I don’t want to go to the Promised Land if you’re not going to go with us. I don’t even want the promise if it doesn’t come with your presence, because your presence is everything. I would rather wander around in this wilderness for the rest of my life, accessing your presence, than to be somewhere where there’s a lot of security, abundance and convenience without you.”

I just know that’s what God is trying to stir up in our hearts. I know that’s what God is trying to do in the Church. I know that this disruption can give way to this: a people that are more fully and completely consecrated to the lover of their soul, and more formed into his image; because that’s what you need. That’s what your spouse needs. That’s what your kids need. That’s what a broken world needs. All of us more formed into the image of the beautiful Christ.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we are here and we hear your plea. We hear your call to us. We hear you as the lover of our souls, asking us to come away with you, asking us to leave some of those other loves behind and to come fully into your love. I pray that you would really, by your Spirit, show us what we need to leave behind, whether it’s sin or just weight, whether it’s wrong or whether it’s just culture. We want to belong to you. Please help us, Jesus. Thank you, Lord.

Well, if you’re new to Christ or not sure if you’ve ever really surrendered your life to Christ, today is a good day for that. The beauty of what Christ is asking us to do is not something new, it’s what he has done for us. He completely gave himself to us, even to the post of death on a cross. And now he’s asking that, because of that, you would give your life to him. And when you give your life to him, he begins to do the work of forming, shaping, teaching and guiding. But you do have to give your life to him. If you want to do that today, you could come up front, we’ve got some people on the sides that would like to pray with you.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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