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Sermon Summary
"How Will You Respond to Jesus?"
🔶 SERMON OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Range of Human Responses
Commentary on reactions to the announcement of a new Pope.
People’s emotions vary: excitement, skepticism, indifference.
Transition to Jesus: how people also respond to him in varied ways.
Key Question: Is it okay to have neutral feelings about Jesus?
II. The Olivet Discourse and the Two Final Categories (Matthew)
Jesus declares that at the end of time, there will be only two types of people:
Those who embraced him (the sheep, right hand)
Those who rejected him (the goats, left hand)
Superficial acknowledgment of Jesus (“Lord, Lord”) is not sufficient.
Jesus demands full submission and trust as Savior and Lord.
III. Overview of the Gospel of Mark
Mark introduces Jesus as the Son of God and King of the Kingdom.
The first half (chapters 1–8): Jesus establishes his identity through miracles:
Authority over demons (e.g., Legion)
Authority over sickness (healing diseases)
Authority over sins (forgiving the paralytic)
Authority over nature (feeding crowds, walking on water)
Pivot in Mark 8: Peter confesses Jesus is the Christ.
From that point on, Jesus reveals his plan for redemption: his death and resurrection (repeated in chapters 8–10).
IV. Jesus’ Final Week (Mark 11–14)
Chapter 11: Triumphal entry and cursing the fig tree (symbol of Israel's spiritual barrenness).
Chapter 12: Warnings against the scribes.
Chapter 13: Prediction of temple destruction and Jesus’ second coming.
Chapter 14 opens with the plot to kill Jesus by religious leaders.
V. Two Responses to Jesus (Mark 14:1–9)
A. Rejection (vv. 1–2)
Chief priests and scribes seek to kill Jesus.
Even though modern hearers aren’t physically crucifying Jesus, choosing sin is still a rejection of him.
Every sin aligns us with the forces that put Jesus on the cross.
B. Worship (vv. 3–9)
Mary’s act of worship: breaks alabaster jar of expensive perfume and anoints Jesus.
This sets up four characteristics of true worship:
🔸 Four Characteristics of True Worship
1. Worship Is Rich (Costly & Lavish)
Mary gives her most valuable possession (worth ~1 year’s wages).
True worship values Jesus above all material goods.
This worship is rich not just materially, but in affection and devotion.
2. Worship Is Reasonable
The disciples (especially Judas) criticize Mary for wastefulness.
Jesus defends her: it was a beautiful thing.
Worship that gives Jesus everything isn’t extravagant—it’s entirely fitting.
Romans 12:1–2 – giving ourselves to God is our reasonable service.
3. Worship Is Rewarded
Jesus promises Mary’s act will be remembered wherever the gospel is preached.
God sees and rewards every act of sacrificial love.
Encouragement especially to those who serve behind the scenes (e.g., mothers, caregivers).
4. Worship Is Responsive
Mary’s act wasn’t to earn favor; it was in response to Jesus’ love and sacrifice.
She is preparing his body for burial—Jesus ties her act to his coming death.
True worship flows from understanding God’s grace, not trying to earn it.
🔶 Conclusion: Side with Mary
Don’t align with the self-righteous or indifferent religious elite.
Pour out your life at Jesus’ feet—he is worthy.
This is another instance of Mary choosing the “better part” (Luke 10).
Final prayer: for God to make us like Mary.
SERMON SUMMARY
This sermon presents a challenge to the listener: How will you respond to Jesus? Through a mix of biblical exposition, narrative overview, and practical application, the preacher presents two stark options: to reject or to worship Christ.
Using Mark 14:1–9 as the focal text, the sermon contrasts the murderous intentions of the religious leaders with the extravagant, sincere devotion of Mary of Bethany. Her act of anointing Jesus with a year’s worth of perfume is held up as a model for Christian worship.
The preacher offers four key traits of real worship—it must be rich, reasonable, rewarded, and responsive. Worship is not about checking boxes but about responding to the immeasurable worth of Jesus and the salvation he has already given.
Sermon Transcript
How will you respond to Jesus?
There was a little discussion this morning about Pope stuff. Obviously, the Catholic Church named a new Pope here a couple days ago. And it's interesting having conversations with Catholic friends and customers at the coffee shop—just the different reactions to the Pope.
There are people who are just excited to the point of tears, like they're really emotionally invested. And there are people who are skeptically excited, like, yeah, we'll see how he does. I talked to a friend of mine, and he said, “I just don't know, Will. I really don't trust Americans.” So he's really skeptical of the idea that there's an American pope.
The way we react to people in general can be all over the map, right? Maybe you feel really strongly, passionately positive towards someone, or really strongly negative towards someone—or you're somewhere in between. And with normal human beings, we can have those kinds of all-over-the-map reactions.
But is that the case with Jesus? A lot of people would say, yeah, I don't have strong feelings about Jesus. It seems like he was probably a good guy. Or, I don't have strong feelings about Jesus. I don't really feel the need to follow him. I don't see the need for a savior. But whatever, if you want to, that's fine.
But what Jesus tells us in the Olivet Discourse in the Gospel of Matthew is that at the end of time, there's only going to be two categories of people. There are those who embraced him as all that he is—Savior, Lord, God—and they are the sheep who will go to his right hand. And then there are those who do not embrace him in that way, which includes many people who are going to say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do all kinds of good things for you?” But they didn’t actually submit to him as their Lord, and they are among the goats who will go to the left-hand side.
That's important for us as a church. We've just gone through about two months of walking through the seven words that Jesus says from the cross and considering his life as it came to an end—an earthly end—where he paid for our sins. And we discussed all that that implied about our sinful state and about the sufficiency of his sacrifice and his sovereignty and all of that.
As we jump back into the Gospel of Mark, we're going to again be confronted with this choice, this decision. There are two ways to respond to Jesus. You can reject him, or you can worship him.
We should reorient ourselves to the Gospel of Mark just a little bit because it's been since August that we were here. The Gospel of Mark introduces itself, chapter 1, verse 1, as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And Mark tells you at the very beginning of his Gospel who he is introducing you to. This is the Son of God who has come to earth.
And in verse 15 of chapter 1, Jesus tells us that the gospel that he comes to bring, the good news that he comes to bring, is the good news of the kingdom. In his coming to earth, Jesus is the king of the universe, the king of God's kingdom, and he has come near. That's the good news that he is preaching.
The first half of Mark's gospel is devoted to Jesus establishing his identity. And so we see that in the authority that he exercises over demons. Chapter 1, verse 34 tells us he's casting out all sorts of demons. It says that right after he has cast out a demon from a man in the synagogue that Sabbath day.
Chapter 5 has the story of Jesus encountering a man when he comes to the region of the Decapolis. He comes to that region and a man meets him from the tombs. This man has—they've tried to chain him up—he's been ripping free of the chains. And Jesus says, “What's your name?” and he says—the demons from within him speak—“We are Legion, for we are many.”
My name is Legion. So Jesus commands the legion of demons to leave this man. Jesus shows his power over the demonic realm, over all spirits, when a full legion, enough to inhabit 2,000 pigs—when Jesus casts them out—they all have to submit to his authority. 2,000 demons, one Jesus. Jesus has authority over all of them. They're begging him for mercy.
We see his authority over sickness. Again, chapter 1, verse 34 says people with all sorts of diseases were coming to him. Same thing in chapter 3, verses 6 and 7. People with all sorts of diseases are coming to Jesus, and he's healing them. But he's doing that, again, to establish his authority, to show that he has authority on earth to forgive sins.
Chapter 2: a group of men—Jesus is in a crowded house. He's healing and he's teaching. And this group of men want to get their buddy to Jesus, and they can't even get into the house. So they break through the roof, drop the man down through the roof, and Jesus, seeing their faith, says, 'Your sins are forgiven.'
The religious leaders who are there think to themselves, this is blasphemy. No one can forgive sins except God alone. And Jesus sees what's in their mind and he says, why do you question among yourselves? What's easier to say, your sins are forgiven or rise, take up your bed and walk? But so that you know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he says to the man, rise, take your bed and go home. And the man stands up, carries his bed out of there.
Jesus shows his power over the physical body in order to establish his authority as God to forgive sins. And we see his authority over nature. We see him feed the 5,000. We see him feed the 4,000. And directly after the feeding of the 5,000, he walks on the water through a storm to the disciples. And when he comes into the boat, the wind and the waves cease.
Jesus has authority over everything in this world, seen and unseen. And that's what the first half of Mark's gospel is devoted to establishing. And in the middle of chapter 8, Jesus takes his disciples aside and he says to them, 'Who do people say that I am?' And they said, 'Well, some say Elijah, John the Baptist raised from the dead, one of the other prophets.' Jesus says, 'Who do you say that I am?' And Peter, speaking for the twelve, says, 'You are the Christ, the Son of God.'
And Jesus, after that moment, it's a pivot. The book pivots from establishing the person of Christ to telling us the plan that Christ has to accomplish the salvation that he has come to bring. And so in chapters 8, 9, and 10, each of them, we have a prediction that Jesus gives of his betrayal into the hands of sinful men, his suffering, his death, and his resurrection.
Chapter 11 begins the Passion Week. Some commentators refer to the Gospel of Mark as a passion narrative with a really long introduction—that's basically what it is. Chapters 11 through 16 all focus on that one week. So in chapter 11, Jesus comes into Jerusalem. Then we have the narrative of the fig tree, where Jesus symbolically curses this tree to show us that the Jewish religious system that has become apostate—that has turned away from God and is just going through the motions—he’s cursed it.
In chapter 12, he warns the disciples and those who are listening to him, 'Beware of the scribes and their practices. They devour widows' houses.' And in chapter 13, he basically proclaims a death sentence on the Jewish nation of that day when he says that the temple is going to come crashing down. He predicts what's going to happen in 70 AD and then tells of his coming return in glory that will usher in the end of all sin.
And so it's with that that we come to chapter 14. And in chapter 14, we read this in verses 1 and 2: 'It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him. For they said, Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.'
One of the ways that you can respond to Jesus is to reject him—is to want to kill him. And before we reject that and say, “Well, that's not me. I'm not trying to kill Jesus. He's not physically here, so I'm not in the same category as the chief priests and the scribes,” what we need to recognize is ultimately their plan comes to fruition, right? It actually comes together faster than they intended. They did not want to kill him during the festival. They were afraid of the crowds. And you're going to see just a few verses later next week that Judas is going to change their plans when Judas goes to betray Jesus. This is actually going to come together faster than they intended.
But what ultimately puts Jesus on the cross is our sins. That’s right. And so, when we're thinking about how do I respond to Jesus, the question is, do I love my sin or do I love Jesus? Because every time I'm choosing my sin, I am choosing that which put Christ on the cross. And so that is still a relevant question for us, even though we're not there plotting and planning with the Sanhedrin. We have to ask, am I choosing to worship Christ or am I choosing that which put him on the cross? Am I choosing that which is abhorrent to God?
That's the question that we have. That one option is to join with the chief priests and the scribes, to love our sin, to love our own way of doing things, to love being our own Lord. And the end of that way, Proverbs tells us, is death, destruction. It's what Jesus says in chapter 13 of Mark's gospel. To embrace your own rule is to reject Christ and to end in destruction.
The other option that we see in the focus of the text and the focus of our sermon this morning is what we see in verses 3 through 9. We see another model laid for us. And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.
There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor,” and they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good to them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
To set the scene: he is at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper. Now, to be in the house of a leper assumes that this leper has been healed, right? According to the customs of the day and the Jewish law, a leper wouldn't have been allowed to have contact with people, let alone would people be coming into his house. And yet he's known as Simon the leper. He's presumably a man who for some time suffered from a severe skin disease, not necessarily what we think of with leprosy and Hansen's disease. But any kind of skin disease could have been described as leprosy. It was bad enough that this was his identity, but he's presumably here been healed—almost certainly by Jesus.
He comes to Bethany, and you can just imagine the scene. Jesus is coming to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, as a Jewish male would have been required to. And so he's coming here to this area. Bethany is just two miles away, and Bethany is also the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus—Lazarus, whom Jesus had recently raised from the dead. You can imagine that this group of people who know Jesus, love Jesus, experienced profound ministry from Jesus are excited that he's here. Simon says, “I'm going to host a feast. I'm going to welcome you in.” And they're reclining at table, which signifies it's a feast. Normally, they would sit up at the table, but for a special occasion, they would recline, which you see at the Passover meal—they're reclined.
Then a woman comes in. Mark doesn't give us the identity of the woman. His focus is going to be elsewhere. We know from John's gospel that this is Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. This is a woman who has known Jesus for a long time, has sat at his feet, has benefited from his ministry, has seen the miraculous worked at his hands. And as he's reclining at this table—this celebratory feast—a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.
We're going to see four aspects of a worshipful response to Jesus this morning. And the first aspect of the worship response to Jesus is that it is rich. It's rich.
What does Mary do here? What does this woman do? She comes with an alabaster flask. This would have been a white jar that had value in itself. It's probably 12 to 16 ounces in capacity, and it's full of what the ESV here translates as pure nard. Other translations say spike nard. It's an expensive ointment. He says here "very costly." We see down in verse 5 that when the disciples are criticizing her action, they say it's worth over 300 denarii. A denarius was a day's wage for your most laborers. In a six-day work week, you've got about a year's worth of salary here is how much value is contained in this jar, in this flask of ointment.
Now, in that society, very few women had gainful employment, right? So where did she even come up with this? This is almost certainly like a family heirloom that's being passed on. And it is almost certainly the most valuable thing that Mary owns. A jar of perfume that, to put in rough modern dollars, maybe it's worth 50 or 60 or 70 thousand dollars. And she keeps it in a precious spot, probably in her home. And when they have this feast, where Jesus has reclined at table, she comes, she interrupts the meal, and she breaks the flask—because they wouldn't have had stoppers; it was a sealed container—she breaks it and pours it on his head.
The Gospel of John says she then wipes his feet with her hair. I don't know if you've ever—I'm sure you've all spilled something at some point in your life. When liquid—you think 12 ounces, that’s not that much—until you spill 12 ounces. That’s a lot of fluid everywhere. And she has dumped it on his head, all down his body to the point where she is then wiping off his feet with her hair.
This worship, this act of worship costs Mary something—probably her most valuable possession. What should we learn from that? Probably not that you should find your most valuable thing—your car or your house—and sell it and then give the money to the church. That’s probably not the application here, although the building fund would benefit from that. I really expected some kind of response from that.
But the point in seeing what Mary is doing here is that she considers Jesus more valuable than her most valuable possession. This is exactly what Jesus is looking for in a disciple. He says elsewhere that if you are not willing to leave behind mother, brother, sister, houses, lands—if you don’t even hate your own life in comparison to how much you love Jesus—you can’t be his disciple. And Mary is demonstrating that whatever she owns is worth giving to Jesus. Everything she owns is worth giving to him.
The question that I have as I reflect on that is: does my life display that I value Jesus above everything else? That’s a really ambiguous question. Like, how do you put wheels on that? “I value Jesus.” Okay, in my heart, I feel some kind of importance related to him. What do I do with that?
One way, I think, just even in the ordering of your life—prioritizing church attendance is actually a way of very tangibly ordering your life around the value of Jesus, of hearing his word and being with his people.
Let me clarify something. When I say that a worshipful response to Jesus is rich, I don't just mean that it's costly to us. I mean that it's rich in the same way that a really good meal can be rich. It might cost you something if you went someplace and paid for this meal—yeah, it was rich in the sense of what it came out of your wallet. But the experience of it, shared with good friends or someone you love—it’s a rich experience.
Mary here is showing—she’s bursting into a room that’s full of men that she’s not allowed into unless she’s serving. And she comes and she interrupts everything to pour out her most valued possession on Christ. She’s not doing that begrudgingly. She’s not doing that because it seems like a religious duty to check off the list. She’s doing it because she loves Jesus that much that she wants to show his value. And this is the only way she can think that is fitting, that is appropriate.
When I think about Sunday morning—ever since I was a little kid, and I’ve not always walked very closely with the Lord in my life—but ever since I was a little kid, by God’s grace, my favorite day has always been Sunday. Because there is something orienting, tethering, in being with God’s people that grounds my whole life.
Another tangible way that we can put this into practice is to just think through—literally, she gave something that cost everything she owned. In the Old Testament, the principle of giving that we see typically is the tithe. And that principle is not reiterated in the New Testament. We're not told that we have to tithe off of our mint and dill and cumin, although Jesus says to the Pharisees, “You should have done that in addition to nailing down the more important matters of the law.”
Rather, the principle that we see in the New Testament is that the Lord loves a cheerful giver. That’s what we see in 2 Corinthians. But the examples that are put forward in Scripture in the New Testament of givers who are getting it are people like the woman in Mark chapter 12 who gives her last two pennies—all she had to live on. And in 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul points to the Macedonians—probably the Philippian church—who out of their suffering and poverty generously gave.
So there's no magic number, like “You have to give this percent of your income,” that the New Testament gives us. But there is a principle of: do you trust him, and do you love him? And do you want to show that with the thing that makes the world go round? Money makes the world go round. And do you trust God with your money enough to say, “I want to worship you with it”? That's an important question to ask.
I don’t want to get too much more specific than that in how to apply this principle, though, because I think that’s a question that we need to linger with in all of our life: does my life put Jesus on display—and his value on display? The first thing about worship is that it's a rich response. And “rich” should encompass our whole lives.
The second is that it's reasonable. The disciples question the reasonableness of Mary’s response to Jesus here—of her worship of Jesus.
In chapter 14, verse 4, it says they said to themselves indignantly, “Why was this ointment wasted like that?” They look at Mary dumping this oil all over Jesus and they say, “What a waste.” Now, I believe it’s Luke’s account of this—or maybe Matthew—where they point out that it’s Judas who makes this statement. And he wasn’t actually worried about the poor. He had control of the purse, and he was scooping money out for himself. And he’s thinking, “300 denarii—I can make 40 or 50 come out pretty easily—maybe 30.”
Nonetheless, surely the other disciples are also looking at this going, “What a waste. Don’t you know what we could have done with this that was good?”—given to the poor, it says in verse 5. And they scold her.
From what I read in the commentaries, “scold” is probably a pretty generous, gentle translation of how they were treating Mary. I'm the oldest of 11 siblings. And I'm not the most gentle person in the world now. When I was younger, I most certainly was not. And anytime a younger sibling did something stupid, I was very quick to let them know in no uncertain terms how dumb I thought they were. And I think that's exactly what the disciples are doing with Mary here. They want her to feel small for having been so wasteful.
How does Jesus respond to that? Jesus says, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.”
If someone is worth more than all the world, and someone gives something that costs a year's worth of wages, is that an extravagant or over-the-top gift—or is it a small but reasonable expression of love?
I was reading a poem this week—I should have printed it off—it’s called The Lanyard by Billy Collins, I think. And he talks in this poem about how he went to summer camp and he went there and braided a lanyard with the help of a camp counselor. And this lanyard, which he had never seen anybody in real life actually use—assumed they must be used for something—but he brought it home for his mom.
And his mom, who had given him life, provided him with an education, who had fed him thousands upon thousands of meals, made sure he had good clothes—he just walks through each of these, and he says, “And in exchange, I give a lanyard. And in exchange, I give a lanyard.” It’s a small thing, right? But in the child’s mind, it’s just, “I’m showing my mom I love her.” And that’s what Mary is doing here.
Mary, to the disciples, to the world around, what she’s doing looks insane. Why would you dump $75,000 on someone’s head and wipe it off with your hair off their feet? It’s tiny compared to what Jesus deserves, but it’s what she had. In fact, Jesus recognizes that here. Verse 8: “She has done what she could.” Her service, as extravagant as it seemed—her worship—is perfectly reasonable because it’s what she could do. It’s what she could do to say, “Jesus, I love you. You are worth everything to me.”
The Apostle Paul, in the book of Romans—chapter 12—in chapters 1 through 11 of Romans, Paul is exulting in the glories of the gospel and telling what God has done for us in Christ. And in chapter 11, that kind of reaches a crescendo point, and he is writing in probably the most poetic language Paul uses anywhere. Romans 11:34–35 says, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given him a gift that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
And Romans 12:1–2 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship”—or some translations say “reasonable service.”
Worship—worshiping Jesus with everything that you have—is always reasonable. It might look crazy to the world. It might look crazy sometimes to other believers who don’t get it. But it is the most logical and reasonable thing you could ever do in light of all that Jesus has given and done.
You wonder if Mary had paid more attention to Jesus’ teaching on his coming suffering and death than the rest of the disciples had. Because Jesus says here, “She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.” And we don’t know. We don’t know if she grasped ahead of time that this is what Jesus was going to do—that he was going to die when nobody else understood it—and she therefore anointed his body, poured this perfume on his body. Or maybe she’s just giving what she has to him because she loves him. And Jesus is pointing to a symbolic meaning that’s beyond what she knew. We don’t know.
But if we are guided by a desire to worship Jesus in everything we do, he’s going to use it beyond what we can see, beyond what we can perceive.
And that takes us to the third aspect of true worship—worshiping Jesus—is that it is always rewarded. Worshiping Jesus is rewarded. There is a sense in many people’s minds that we shouldn’t care about rewards. And that is silly, because the Bible promises rewards for loving and worshiping Jesus.
Jesus says here, “She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
Do you ever think about the things that you do—the things, whether it’s in worship and coming to church, or the giving that you do, or the sacrifices that you make for others? That’s where I could have turned this and made it a Mother’s Day sermon—the sacrifices you make behind the scenes that nobody’s ever going to know, nobody’s ever going to notice.
One of the struggles, honestly, that I watch a lot of mothers face is they become embittered by that lack of notice—the feeling unseen, either by the kids or by her husband or by the world around, not acknowledging all that I’m doing. This is part of why Instagram exists: to show the world how awesome I am and all the things that I’m doing.
But if you’re living for the approval of other people—even people that you love very dearly—you’re not actually going to love them very well. Because then you’ll start doing things just because you think you’ll get affirmation from them. And then when they still don’t give it, or when they give it inconsistently, you’re going to be crushed by that.
But if you’re living with a recognition that Jesus sees everything, and he will reward worship—and that worship might be coming and singing; that worship might be getting up in the middle of the night to feed a baby or to clean up a child who’s sick and cleaning up their vomit; it might be changing a diaper; it might be making a meal; it might be going to work—like there’s all kinds of ways that we worship God, offering our bodies, all of us, our whole lives, as living sacrifices to him.
And he sees every bit of it. And he values that worship and will reward it. Hebrews 11 tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. And here’s how he defines faith: “For those who would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
We need to live—we need to worship—with an understanding that worship is rewarded eternally. We don’t have to live for the approval of other people. If we are living to worship Christ with our lives, that has a reward. And unlike people, God is not fickle. God does not change. And he does not forget.
Finally, the last thing we see is that the worshipful response to Jesus is a response. What is she preparing Jesus beforehand for? She’s preparing his body for burial, it says. He’s going to be buried because he’s going to be crucified—in her place—for her sins. He is her Savior. And that is why she responds in this way.
All true worship—and this is so important for us to always remember, I’m not saying anything new here—but all true worship is a response to the fact that God has already loved us. First John says, “We love because he first loved us.” We don’t walk through a set of worship practices, we don’t give certain things away in order to achieve favor with God. Favor with God is a gift—given through the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ, who is killed and raised on our behalf.
And so if we are united to him by faith, then we pour out our lives in service to him. It is a response to what he has already done for us. So true worship doesn’t achieve favor with God—it’s a response to having received salvation through Jesus.
That kind of response can—and should—carry us through every day. And so my exhortation is: side with Mary, not with the chief priests, not with the scribes. Side with Mary, pouring out everything at the feet of Jesus. This is one more example of Mary choosing the better part. The better part is to be with Jesus.
Would you pray with me?
Father God, we thank you for the gift of your Son. And we thank you for the example that we have in Scripture of those who poured out everything for you. Would you make us like them? Would you make us like Mary? We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
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