Hey everybody! I know that you are probably going a little stir crazy right now, I know I am. But in an effort to make your upcoming Easter week meaningful, I decided to do something different for you, and frankly for myself. I took the gospel accounts of Jesus life, from His last week to all the resurrection appearances, to His ascension, and built a “Harmony of Jesus Last Days.” And I am going to talk through them, each day, as they occurred, two thousand years ago. So, for example, tomorrow at Supper time, you can listen, on the podcast, to a devotional about the anointing of Jesus that happened in Bethany, just before “Passion Week.” Then on Sunday I will teach about the Triumphal entry etc.
Now keep in mind, as I teach, that I don’t intend to go “deep in the weeds” in explaining every detail of the account. I want to answer any questions that keep you from understanding the account. I want you to get a sense of how this story fits into Passion week. And I want you to be spiritually enriched by its truths. So keep your eyes open for those podcasts. I will title each one so that you know when this event happened in Passion week. God bless.
Saturday evening 8th of Nisan 30 A.D.
Jesus has been marching decisively toward Jerusalem. Scripture had declared that He must be (Isaiah 53) 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (That He must…)
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
So He’s marching to His own death, and He knows it.
Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.
John 12:23-24 King James Version (KJV)
23 And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.
24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
And He is going to a specific place, because His crucifixion must occur outside of Jerusalem, and a specific time, the exact time prophesied by Daniel that would bring Messiah the Prince. But before the people shout “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,” before they shout “Crucify,” before anyone but Jesus understands that He will be the final Passover Lamb that takes away the sin of the world, one solitary woman receives that incite from the Spirit of God. She gets it. She has come to the destination that the Lord would have us all arrive at. That destination is the understanding that Jesus death on the cross was not an unfortunate event of history. It was the foreordained plan of God, from eternity past.
And this is how it happened…
I’m reading in my Bible in John 11:55-12:1. Why don’t you get a Bible and read along with me?
55 And the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.
The Jewish Passover is an annual feast of the Jews that commemorates God delivering them from slavery in Egypt. And it is an important event in Christian history as well. You see, on the first Passover, God told the Israelites to kill a spotless lamb, and to put its blood on the door of their house. And if they did so, then the final plague against the Egyptians, would not hurt them. The final plague was the death of every first born child in Egypt. So if they would apply the blood to their home, no death would come to that house.
About 1500 years later Jesus is called by John the Baptist, “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And on this date, in 30 AD, Jesus would be slain, so that those who fear God’s judgment for sin, could have His blood applied to their hearts, and have Spiritual eternal death, Passover them.
This is the feast Jesus is going to attend in Jerusalem.
Continuing in John 11…
56 Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?
Curiosity about Jesus was heightened. For 3 years He had traveled from town to town across the nation of Israel, teaching, preaching, raising dead people, and healing any person who asked. He had visited Jerusalem during the feast days on 2 previous occasions during His ministry, and each time He had encountered fierce opposition from the political and religious leaders of His day. It was no different this time.
Verse
57 Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him.
He was becoming too popular. He was gathering crowds of thousands, and they had heard rumors of His healing, and that twice He miraculously feed groups of upward to 20,000, by dividing up a few loaves of bread and fish. They were concerned that He may claim to be the Scripture promised messiah, and lead the people in revolt against Roman rule, and worse, in revolt against them.
They wanted Him arrested, so they could trump up some charges in order to have him put to death. They hated and feared Him, so they wanted to do it away from the crowds, lest the crowds get violent against them.
12 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.
He went to Bethany. Bethany is only 2 miles from Jerusalem on the south eastern slope of the mount of olives.
One of the most astounding types of miracles that Jesus performed was to raise the dead. But in most cases, the person had just died. In the case of Lazarus, he had been dead for 4 days, and his body was already decaying in the tomb, when Jesus called him back to life.
So, the family of Lazarus, his sisters Martha and Mary and Lazarus himself, are very grateful to Jesus and they invite Him to eat supper with them, the evening before, what we call, Palm Sunday. And others came
9 Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead.
2 There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.
Martha is setting out food, and cooking, Lazarus is at the table with Jesus and at least His disciples, but where is Mary?
3 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
Spikenard was an oil extracted from the root of a plant in India. It was used as a perfume. And by Biblical weights she had about 12 ounces of the oil. It was sometimes bought as an investment, or passed on in an inheritance. And it would have been in a sealed bottle or container, that, once opened would be difficult to reseal, so it was intended to be opened only once.
So what does she do? She comes to the gathering of the men at supper. Now they ate together in a different fashion than we do. If we looked at them today, we would say that they were laying on the floor around a very short legged table. And they would lean on one elbow near the table, with their feet extended out away from the table in order to allow more people around the table. Everyone would have removed their shoes, and possibly had their feet washed, removing the grime of the dirt roads, as they arrived. It was even customary to anoint a person’s head as they entered. It was done as an honor, to refresh them after their journeying.
So Jesus feet are extended out, and Mary goes to another part of the house, retrieves this container of spikenard, goes to Jesus feet, and while the conversation and eating are taking place at the table, she opens the container and pours its contents on Jesus’ feet, and wipes His feet with her hair.
Now needless to say, the conversations came to a standstill. This did not go unnoticed. The room was filled with the smell of the perfume. She didn’t just dab it on, she used all of it. And though she likely had planned to do this, maybe from the time that Jesus raised her brother from the dead, at this moment her impulses take over. She has poured a lot of oil on Jesus’ feet, and now it is running down onto the floor, she has no cloth to catch it, so she takes her hair, and uses it to continue wiping the oil on Jesus’ feet.
In the quiet of that moment, nobody knows what to say, or how to respond. But one person among Jesus’ disciples is disgusted by this act.
4 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,
5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?
The word for pence here is a 1st century coin, the denarius. It was a Roman coin, originally minted, and worth “10 donkeys” or den asses. It’s value deteriorated significantly until Jesus day, when the Bible describes it as worth, about a day’s wage for a common laborer.
So Judas indicates that this container of costly oil could have been sold for 300 days wages. About a year’s wage for a workingman. That’s a lot of money. Several thousand dollars. And one might agree with Judas that that could help quite a few poor people. But Judas doesn’t really care for poor people.
Continuing…
6 This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.
What outraged Judas, wasn’t that an opportunity to help poor people was missed, but because he imagined that the perfume might have been given to Jesus as an offering to support His ministry, and therefore he, Judas, as treasurer, might have been able to sell it and steal some of the money from that sale.
But it was an extravagant gesture. What was she thinking? Jesus tells us.
7 Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this.
8 For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.
Jesus says, there will always be poor people to help. And by this, He is not denigrating the poor, or their aid. Rather, He is elevating something else.
You see, we think that the highest virtue that a human being can achieve is to help people, by giving to them, by serving them, by helping them. We think that the best people in this world are those who dedicate their lives to care for sick, or poor people.
But Jesus said that there is something even greater; Loving Him
He says about her, she knows something that you all have missed. She knows where I am headed. I am on my way to Jerusalem to be arrested, humiliated, tried, and beaten with whips and nailed to a wooden cross. All to bear the sins of the world. To take the punishment for man’s sin on Himself, so, if they place their faith in Him, they won’t have to be eternally punished for their sin.
She sees His death coming, when no one else does. Not even Jesus disciples understood when He told them what was about to happen.
So, in that moment, overcome by joy that Jesus raised her brother from the dead, and overcome with grief that Jesus was headed to the cross, she breaks open her treasure to offer to Jesus, as an anointing for His burial.
She has found Jesus, the priceless pearl, and she is willing to sell all she has to have that pearl.
This story illustrates how people have reacted to Jesus. Some are just curious, some are followers, some hypocrites, even some are like…
10 But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death;
11 Because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus.
They hated Jesus so much, that they wanted to kill Him, and erase any evidence of His power, even by destroying him whom He had raised from the dead.
So the question for us today is, who are you in this story?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, I pray that as we begin remembering this, the most sacred of weeks, its significance would be more than just a gathering of followers and hypocrites. That it would be an occasion where we clearly see why Jesus died. And we will turn from our sin that put Jesus on the cross, and turn to Him in love and appreciation for His sacrifice. And we pray this in the precious name of Jesus, amen