Sermon Notes, July 12, 2015
The Apostles Creed: Dying to Live (Pt.1) John 12:1-9
Every week we’ve been looking at a basic vocabulary word of the faith, a basic building block, a basic concept of faith and spirituality, taking these from the Apostles’ Creed. Today I want to get to one you might miss. It’s important.
When Isaiah came near & had the vision of the very being of God in the temple, he heard the angels declaring the greatness of God to one another, and they were not saying, “Love, love, love,” or “Justice, justice, justice,” which they could have. They were saying, “Holy, holy, holy.” The Apostles’ Creed almost follows suit, because when you get near the end of it, you’ll see one of the things you profess is, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.”Then “… in the Holy Catholic Church,” which we just finished looking at. Then “… in the Communion of Saints,” which, of course, is the Latin word sanctus, which means the holy ones, so you’re confessing God is holy. You’re confessing the church He creates is holy, and you’re confessing the individual people who come to relate to God are made holy.
Now what’s the point of all of this? The point is you can come to God for all sorts of things He can give you. He can give you love. He can give you vision. He can give you strength. He can give you lots of things, but what the canopies and the seraphim declare is the God of the Bible cannot be dealt with apart from holiness. Holiness is something that has to be dealt with if you’re going to approach God.
But when we talk about the fact that you cannot deal with the God of the Bible apart from holiness, chances are that that doesn’t excite you, because the word holiness, the word sanctity hits us with a difficult connotation in our vocabulary. Almost never do we use the word holier unless we say holier-than-thou. We almost never use the word sanctus unless we use the word sanctimonious or sanctimony.Because the concept of holiness is confusing to people, obscure or negative, we don’t even know what this means, and yet we have to deal with holiness. Holiness is critical.
Every week, we’ve been going to some place in the gospel of John, and I’m going to a place that doesn’t have the word holiness, but has just about the most wonderful narrative depiction of holiness I know. There’s nothing that kind of goes to your heart like a story, and what we have here is a banquet. It’s a banquet in Jesus’ honor in Bethany, because Jesus, just a chapter before, in chapter 11, has done the climactic miracle of his ministry, according to the gospel of John. That is, He has raised his friend, Lazarus, from the dead.Lazarus is there. Martha, very much in character, is in charge. Martha is the practical one. She serves, and in comes the second sister (the other sister of Lazarus, Mary), and she does something we’re going to look at that is so absolutely unpractical & so absolutely amazing.
(By the way, this is not only given to us here in John 12, but also in Mark 14, and Matthew 26.)
Four things we really learn about what it means to be holy, what holiness is in a human being are unconditional, inexplicable, perceptual, and beautiful.
- Unconditional
First of all, Mary comes in. At first, I don’t think anybody was surprised. She comes in with what? It says, “… Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume …” Now in those days when you came into a big banquet, or a big event, it was perfectly normal to get out the perfume or the ointment.
These are the years before deodorant. These are the years before baths and showers and running water and you had was a hot climate. Therefore, it was normal, when you came into the festive occasion, to get out a perfumed ointment. See, spices, scents, aromatics, fragrances and perfumes were critical. Very often, when you came in, the host or the hostess would dab a bit of the ointment on your head.
But what she does with it is so startling that we’ll see in a minute here why the gospel writer John only tells us about Judas’ reaction. He has narrative reasons for it, but if you go to Mark 14:5, there’s an amazing statement. It says, “… they rebuked her harshly,” and even that is really almost a euphemism, because the word for rebuked harshly there is a word that means to bellow with anger, to snortorto roar like an animal. It’s the same word that’s used when Jesus approaches the tomb of Lazarus.
Can you imagine? I mean, until I was studying this and I was thinking about it this week, it never occurred to me that what she did was so outrageous, so shameful to the people who were there, so disgusting, so offensive that pretty much everyone in the whole room started yelling at her.
What did she do? She did three things.
a)First of all (and this is what we get from Mark), she broke the box.
Look what it says. It says, “She got out a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume, and she poured it.” Now in Mark it tells us she broke the box, and when you break the box, the container, that means not a little dab. It’s all coming out. When you break the container, it means you’re using the whole thing.It says, “… the house was filled with the fragrance …”
Now the reason this was so astounding to people was this was an incredibly expensive thing. As Judas says, this was a year’s wages.Not only that, but if it was in an alabaster box, which is what Mark tells us, it almost certainly was an heirloom being passed on down, and it was really, essentially, the financial security of that family. This was a hedge against disaster.But the first thing she does is break the box and pour the whole thing all out. That’s the first amazing thing.
b)The second amazing thing she does is put it on His feet.
In a time and in a place, as we’re going to see in a second, where dealing with the feet was considered unbelievably demeaning, unbelievably humiliating, you must never demean somebody by insisting they come and do anything to your feet. That was the cultural more at the time, and that was the second incredible thing.
c)The third incredible thing was she wiped it with her hair. She let her hair down.
She unbound her hair in public, which was considered a complete scandal. They bellowed at her, and Jesus says, “Leave her alone.” You know, I can imagine somebody yelling, “Where is your sense of proportion and propriety?” and Jesus is saying, “Her sense of proportion is perfect.”
He understood what it meant. What did it mean? Well, here’s what she’s saying. In all three of these things, what she is saying is, “I am not going to respond to Jesus Christ with any conditions. It is inappropriate to respond to Jesus Christ conditionally. I follow him, I give myself to him, and I commit myself to him unconditionally and without reserve.”
Look at the three things she did.
First of all, when she breaks the box and gives it all out, what is she saying? She’s not giving 10 percent, by the way. There’s no way, when she did this, this was a tithe of her net worth. It was more like 100 percent. So what she’s doing at this point is saying, “I will follow you, no matter what the cost.” Unconditionally. That’s number one.
Number two: When she goes to His feet, though, she’s going even further.That’s the reason why the disciples, by the way, in John 13, are going to be absolutely aghast when Jesus does it; the idea of Jesus demeaning Himself like that.Here’s what she’s doing.She’s actually coming in, and she’s saying this: “I know even servants here in our culture have rights, but I give them up. Even servants here in this culture, there are certain things you can’t ask them to do, but I give up that right. I am not going to follow you, conditioned by control. I don’t want control. I give up my rights to self-determination. There is nothing you cannot ask of me.”
Then, thirdly, and most amazing of all, when she lets down her hair, she goes even further. You see, why were they scandalized? You know, rabbis said if a married woman lets down her hair in public, it’s grounds for divorce, and of course, if any woman let down their hair, it was considered a scandal.When a woman would unbind her hair, the rabbis said, “This is a way of showing openness. This is a way of showing love. This is a way of showing intimacy. This is something you should be doing only in private, at home with your most intimate family members.” That’s what it meant in that culture.
What is she doing when she does this? You see, it’s very possible to say, “I will obey you, no matter what you say. I will obey you, no matter what you send. I will obey you, no matter what the law says. I will obey you, no matter what, unconditionally.” But there’s still something you can hold back. You can still hold on to your emotions, still hold on to your heart, still not make Him the thing you delight in.
What Mary is saying is, “Not only am I going to give you everything I have, but I’m going to give you everything I am.” This is amazing. You know what she’s actually doing? When she puts down and breaks the glass, she’s saying,Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.
When she goes to the feet, she’s saying,Take my will, and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine.
But when she lets down her hair, she says,Take my love; my Lord I pour at thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for thee.
What she’s really saying is, “I’m willing to rebuild my identity around you. I’m not just giving you my volition. I’m giving you my deepest delight.”
Why have I chosen this? What is holiness? Here’s what holiness is, and this is, I believe, one of the reasons why John leaves out everybody else and just gives us Judas. What does it tell us about Judas?“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” he says. “’It was worth a year’s wages.’ 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.”
Now what John is doing is narratively a way of telling us something. He’s teaching us this. He is saying there are only two options: selling Jesus or being sold out to Jesus. There are only two options: using Jesus or making yourself available to be used.
When you go into the Old Testament, one of the things that is very confusing to read about is holy furniture. The first time I read in Leviticus and Numbers about holy furniture it seemed confusing. How can furniture be holy? Because, see, when you think of holiness, right away you think of morality, don’t you? You think of some kind of inner morality and purity or something like that, and of course, holiness leads to that. Of course it does. That’s not primarily the meaning. It means to be wholly set apart. What does that mean? To be perfectly obedient? No, there’s a principle involved here. There’s a decision that has to be made. In the beginning, being holy is not so much your record. Nobody is perfect. Nobody does everything right. It’s not a matter of, “I have 100 rules, and this week I kept 82. Next week I’ll keep 84. That means I’ll be more holy.”
No, you’re missing the forest for the trees. What it means to be holy is to say, “Am I following God unconditionally or conditionally?” But let me give it to you another way.Am I using God, am I sticking with God as long as it profits me, as long as it’s not too expensive, as long as I have some say, as long as I’m able to put my heart other places? Am I obeying God for my sake or for His?
Holiness means to say,Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for thee.
What it means to be holy is to make a decision, to say, “No matter what he says, no matter what he sends, I will not only obey him, but I will work my heart and reflect until I see that’s good. I will obey him, and I will like it, because I will give him not just my will, but my heart.”
Well, let me show you what else the text says. The text gives us some real help. The text, in other words, tells us what it means to be holy. This is the reason why sanctushas to be up there. To say God is holy really means He is to be worshipped for who He is in Himself. He’s not a means to an end. To approach Him in holiness means to settle that. You and I have to make that decision.
Are you ready to settle things with Him?