Highlight Moments
- Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.
- Knowing who Jesus is, is more important than just doing something and doing that thing wrong.
- Jesus wants our real self, our real emotions, who we are at the moment, not just our best selves.
- She looks at her inheritance and she values Jesus more.
- Our relationship with Jesus needs to come first.
Summary
The sermon focuses on a character study of Mary of Bethany, emphasizing the steps of faith she exemplified in her relationship with Jesus. It highlights the importance of learning at Jesus's feet, presenting our true selves to Him, and being fully committed to Him above all else.
Sermon Audio
Transcript
Well, we can hit the lights on. Jane, you wanna grab that? Jane, you wanna hit the lights on? Woo! Wowee! Good golly. No, it sure doesn't.
All right, guys. Well, I'm very excited to be here with you tonight. We are gonna be in John chapter 11, so you guys can open up your Bibles there. Today, we're gonna be looking at a character study of this woman named Mary of Bethany. So let's get over to John chapter 11. We are going to be in verse one.
So just go straight over to John 11, verse one. Give you guys a second to get there. Can anyone tell me about who we learned about over the weekend? Does anyone remember? We did learn about Lazarus. Do you guys know who Mary is? It's gonna be Lazarus' sister. So that's what we're gonna be looking at today, a character study of Lazarus' sister named Mary.
And we're gonna be seeing today what the steps of faith are. So over the next 20 minutes or so, I'm very excited to tell you guys all about the steps of faith that Mary went through in her faith journey. Are you guys ready? Can we get a "let's do this" if you're in John 11?
Okay, perfect. So what we're gonna be looking at today is steps of faith as well as their common misunderstandings. Who can tell me what a misunderstanding is?
Yeah, Aiden. A misunderstanding is something that's misunderstood. What does it mean to be misunderstood?
Yeah, Ryan. To not be like. I love it, I love it. You don't know what it means. So to misunderstand something is to not understand what it means. Kind of like when I asked you guys what that means, if you don't know, then it's a misunderstanding. You don't understand it. Ah, I see you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, perfect. We're gonna be looking at that today. The steps of faith as well as their common misunderstandings. And the three things we're gonna see is this: from Mary's life, we'll see we need to learn at Jesus's feet, we need to go to Jesus with everything, and we need to be fully sold out.
So if you guys don't have a note page, we highly encourage you guys to take notes. So if you don't have one and you would like one, could you please raise your hand? Jordan Austin will get a note page into your guys' hands.
Well, guys, we have absolutely no time to waste. This is what we're gonna be looking at today. Let's jump into our very first point. We're gonna see Mary understood we need to learn at Jesus's feet first.
So let's check this out, guys. I know you're in John 11, verse one. Don't change where you're at. I'm gonna read to you guys from Luke chapter 10, verses 38 through 42, as we see Mary learning at Jesus's feet.
So let's check this out. Now, as they were on their way, Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me."
But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you're anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."
What we see in this very first section is that Mary understands we need to learn at Jesus's feet. Well, why is that? Because knowing who Jesus is, is more important than just doing something and doing that thing wrong.
So let's check out this first thing. What do we see in our first section? Right here, we need to learn at Jesus's feet. Why is that? Well, what does the text say? Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, is sitting at Jesus's feet. And what is Martha doing? She's serving.
Okay, she's doing the dishes, she's doing whatever. She's serving around the house. And what does she say to Jesus? No guesses. Make my sister help me. If you know, you can just yell it out, Aiden. What'd she say?
Yeah, but that's not really what she says. We see that Mary is sitting at Jesus's feet and listening to what he is saying. But Martha, her sister, is going around the house doing chores, whatever. And she tells Jesus, "Jesus, make my sister Mary help me with these chores."
See, right here, Martha wants Mary to help her with the chores, but what does Jesus respond with? He says, "No." Jesus wants Mary to continue to sit at his feet and listen.
Well, why is that? How many of you guys by raise of hand have chores at home? Okay, well, I don't have chores at home, but I used to have chores at home.
Okay, we can check out this next thing. Chores are hard. By raise of hand, could you guys get on board with that? Chores are hard. How many of you guys would get on board with chores are annoying? Oh, okay, that's way more people.
How many of you guys could get on board with, I wish my siblings would do my chores? Do you wish that you did so they could do your chores? You see, previous slide. You see, chores are a lot of work. I think we can all agree on that. And that's what Martha is doing all around the house.
But Mary is just sitting at Jesus' feet listening. If you're going around the house doing your chores and your sibling is just sitting there playing Fortnite, what are you gonna feel?
Yeah, you love Fortnite. So why are you doing chores over here while your sibling gets to go do Fortnite? Are you gonna be pretty upset? Okay, buddy. While Martha's going around the house doing chores, Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet. And Martha is upset that Mary gets to listen while Martha has to go and do these chores.
But Jesus reveals something very important for us. Knowing who Jesus is is more important than just going and doing something that we think is good. See, that's totally backwards from what I thought it would be. When we follow Jesus, are we supposed to do good things? Come on, softball question. Of course we are.
But what is Jesus saying right here? The first thing that we need to do as Christians, our first step of faith, is not immediately go out and do things that we think are good. Instead, what we need to do is sit at Jesus' feet and listen.
Well, why is that? You can pull up our next slide, Aiden. We need to listen to what Jesus says first before we go out and try to do things because we can only do what we know.
Now, I wanna ask you guys something. Might be a little bit heavy. How many of you guys know what suicide bombers are? Yeah, all you guys know. Do you guys know why most of the time those people do that? Shout it out.
Perfect, you guys exactly got it. Let me repeat that. Most of the time, people who go and do suicide bombings do that because they want to honor God. Now, do you guys, okay. Do you know, or sorry, do you guys believe that that is honoring to God?
Okay. Do you believe that's honoring to God? You're good. You don't believe it's honoring to God? Why? Wait, why is that not honoring to God?
Okay. So your reasoning for knowing that that's not honoring to God comes from what? The Bible, exactly. See, we can only do what we know. And so if we think that we know God, but we have a false understanding of God, well, if we know a false God, we're gonna do things that are not honoring to the true God.
So what Jesus tells Mary here is not to, okay, you're a Christian now, great. Just go out and do whatever you think is good. No, Jesus wants Mary to sit here at his feet and listen and learn who he is. Because if we don't know the true God, are we gonna do good things that honor God? No.
But if we know the true God, we sit at Jesus's feet, we know what he wants from us, are we gonna be able to honor him? Absolutely. That's our first step of faith. We have to learn at Jesus's feet.
Now let's check out the second thing. So we're learning at Jesus's feet. You know, we go to church, we go to Bible study, we understand who he is. Well, now we need to go to Jesus with everything. If you guys are in John chapter 11, can we get a "let's do this"?
Perfect. We're gonna be in verse one and then verse 32 and 33. So we're jumping down way far. Let's check this out. Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
And then skipping way down between these two sections, Lazarus, what happens to him? Any guesses? He's dead. All right, perfect. You guys are right on top of it. So Lazarus dies. And now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. The second thing that we see, the second step of faith we see with Mary is that we need to go to Jesus with everything.
Well, what's the misconception there? We need to go to Jesus with our real self. Jesus wants our real self, our real emotions, who we are at the moment, not just our best selves.
You guys ever gone to a church before where your parents have to get really dressed up? I have. And going to a church like that, you might believe that God only wants to interact with your best self. You guys ever heard the term your Sunday best?
Okay, I've heard it too. See, but Jesus doesn't just want our best selves. Jesus wants every version of us. And so we need to go to Jesus with everything, and we'll see how Mary does that right here.
See, Lazarus, Mary's brother, was sick. And who can tell me what happens to Lazarus? He dies. Okay, at this point, has Jesus raised him from the dead yet? No. So what happens? Mary is reasonably upset about Lazarus. And who does Mary go to? Jesus.
Does Mary say, "Oh man, Jesus, I'm so confident in your plan right now that I'm not even upset a little bit"? Does she say that? No, what does she say? "Jesus, if you were around right now, my brother wouldn't have been dead."
And Mary presents her real self, her real emotions to Jesus. And if she's saying, "Man, Jesus, where were you?" Sometimes we might think that, you know, when we go to God with our real emotions, that God's looking down at us like, "I can't believe they just said that right now."
Does Jesus do that right here? "Mary, what are you talking about? Why don't you have faith?" Is that what he says? What does he say instead? Sorry, what happens instead? Not what does he say? It says right here that he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled because of the sadness of his friends and the other Jews.
Jesus' heart was broken for these people. Why? Because they brought their real self to Jesus. They presented their real emotions to him. And so right here, we see that Jesus was moved with compassion.
How many of you guys, okay, you're walking into class, you're talking with your parents, you're hanging out with people who aren't very close friends and they say, "How are you?" Any of you guys? Anyone ever asked, "How are you?"
And you say, "Good." Okay. Have you guys ever responded with "good" when you don't really mean "good"? Okay, reminds me of this really old meme that I personally think is hilarious. Someone asks, "How are you?" And you say, "It's fine. It's going great. Everything's good. Better than I deserve."
No, he really wants to know what I'm feeling because his heart is for me and his heart is for you guys. It's really easy for us to think, "Man, does Jesus even care about the situations on earth right now? Like Jesus rose from the dead and went up to heaven. And I mean, was that it? Everything just goes downhill from there. Does Jesus even care about what's going on right now?"
See, this world really does have hurt. People getting physically hurt, injustice happening, poverty. These things are real in our world. And Jesus really does care about them.
See, Jesus cared about Mary here. And when was it that his heart was moved with compassion? What happened right before that? Yeah, Ben? Notice what happens. Jesus's heart is moved with compassion when what? When Mary goes to him and asks him, "Jesus, where were you?"
When she presents what she's feeling to an almighty God, his heart is moved with compassion for her. Thanks for that, Ben. See, Jesus wants our real self, all of ourself, not just our best self. That's our second step of faith.
Our first thing, we need to know who Jesus is and sit at his feet so we're not serving a false God. We need to present our real self, all of ourself to him and not hold anything back.
And then finally, we see that Mary has gone through those two steps and now she understands what it looks like to be fully sold out. And this is a story you guys might be much more familiar with. So I'm gonna be in John chapter 12. Please flip over to there. It's gonna be verses three through five and verse eight.
And it says this. It says, "Mary, which is the same Mary as from before, took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas, one of the disciples who was about to betray him said, 'Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denari and given to the poor?' And Jesus responds, 'For the poor, you will always have with you, but you do not always have me.'"
Our final step of faith. We need to learn from Jesus. We need to present our full self to Jesus. And then what? We need to be fully sold out. Because in our hearts, Jesus needs to be number one, not just another number, not just another figure, another person to love. Jesus needs to be absolutely number one above everybody.
And I do mean everybody. So let's get a little bit of context here. I said that this was 300 denari. Who here knows what a denari converts to? What is it, Chase? Okay. That's actually exactly it. It is a day's wage.
So how many days are in a year? 365. So if it's 300 denari, is it a lot or a little? Okay. Some scholars estimate that this is around $40,000 worth of oil.
Now, let me ask you, what is this woman doing walking around with $40,000 worth of oil? Any guesses? Marriage? Not necessarily. Kaiva? Wait, wait, wait. Okay, you're exactly right. But how did she get her hands on this before? Any guesses? What do you got? Jesus?
Okay, let me fill you guys in on this. Back then, this would be this woman's inheritance. If her dad died, if she couldn't get married, well, you know what? It's okay. You have a year to figure things out. You have one year's worth of wages for you to figure everything out where you don't have to be supported by someone else.
This was this woman's future. If she gave this away and something happened to her family and she wasn't married, who's gonna be taking care of her? Nobody. So before this, she could have sold this oil for, what, 40 grand and lived off of that for quite some time.
But instead, what does she do? No, she doesn't give it to the poor. That's the thing that Judas is saying. She instead gives it to Jesus. She pours it over his feet. So what is happening here?
Now that we have that little bit of context. See, Mary washes Jesus's feet. And as we're gonna see in a second, she doesn't wash Jesus's feet like a normal person with water and a rag. She washes it with her $40,000 worth of oil and her hair.
How many of you guys, that's great. That's what you wanna do. Okay, that's awesome. And Judas asks this very, previous. Judas asks this very good question. Why wasn't this money given to the poor?
Do you guys know how many meals $40,000 could do? When I worked at the Bible college, we ran about $4 a meal. So Judas is asking a really good question here because she could have sold that and had 10,000 meals for the poor and homeless people in her community.
Did you hear what I said? 10,000 meals she could have given away to the poor, but instead what does she do with it? She pours it out in Jesus's feet because there are two different ways that we're able to love God. And we're gonna look at those right now.
But first, what does she do? Take a look at this right here and get your giggles out. Cause this is ridiculous. I know that's, that's pretty crazy. I think the caption is very fitting. That's weird.
How many of you guys agree? That's, that's pretty weird. I think it's weird personally. Okay, but that's okay. And I think we'll see why. Let's take a look at this right here.
Let me ask you guys. Did they have Nike back then? What didn't they were, they were wearing on their, on their feet? Sandals, buddy. So they'd be wearing sandals and sandals are open-toed shoes. And they're walking around on the street.
And when you walk, believe it or not, you actually sweat. I know it's pretty crazy. And when you sweat, you smell bad. Okay. So all these people are walking around on these roads, these dusty roads. And so as you're walking, you know, you got these open-toed shoes, you're sweating and dust gets on your wet feet.
What do you think's going to happen? It's going to turn into sweat mud. And that's pretty disgusting. Can we agree with that? That's pretty gross. See, you're walking around back then and everyone's got to deal with these sweat mud feet.
So when you get in someone's house, a servant comes by and washes your feet so you don't get sweat mud all over your friend's floor. But see, Mary sees Jesus, the man who is going to give her her salvation. And then she sees her inheritance.
And which one do you think she values more? Her inheritance or Jesus? Well, we don't have to guess because it's right here in the text. She looks at her inheritance and she values Jesus more.
She doesn't wash Jesus's feet, which I believe would have been dirty, even though it's Jesus, he would have had dirty feet walking around. See, she doesn't wash Jesus's feet like a normal servant with water and a rag. She uses the absolute best of what she has, her inheritance oil and her very own hair.
Why? Well, I believe it's because this oil, yeah, it could have been saved up for a future. But mature Christians, people who have faith in God, and I don't even know if I'm at that level of maturity, honestly, but she looks at her inheritance and I believe she thinks, "This is the most important moment in my life right now, is serving Jesus with this."
And you know what? If God wants me to starve tomorrow, that's what's gonna happen. If God wants me to win the lottery tomorrow, that's what's gonna happen. But I know what God has for me right now, and that is to serve him.
And so that's what she does with this oil. She washes his feet with the oil and her hair. Why? Because she is completely sold out to Jesus. Jesus could take care of her from there.
Okay, he's God, he's the almighty creator. If he wants her to keep on living and be provided for, he will do that. But she doesn't have to worry about that right now. She's gonna give everything that she has to Jesus. She is fully sold out.
Now I wanna ask you guys something. Okay, my wife is over here in the back. You guys can all turn around. Sorry to call you out, honey. Okay, that's her. You guys can turn back around. My wife is in the room while I say this.
What do you guys think is more important? My relationship with Jesus or my relationship with my wife? Well, that seems like a pretty easy question for you guys. Jesus. For my wife, what do you think is more important? Her relationship with Jesus or her relationship with me?
And that is what Jesus responds with when Judas asks, "Why wasn't this sold and given to the poor?" Let me remind you, 10,000 meals that could have been given to the poor. And Jesus says that he is more deserving of this than they are.
Why? Well, because the Bible gives two different ways to serve God. And you guys are familiar with both of these. This is what the classic thing that Jesus has asked. What is the most important commandment? It's to love God and love others.
But do you notice the order? Because the order is incredibly important. You love God first, and then you love others out of that. If I wanna love my wife well, who do I need to love first? God.
If I'm gonna love my wife, do you think I'm going to love God well just by hanging out with Emma? Maybe. But if I love God well, am I definitely going to love my wife well? Absolutely. The order is incredibly important.
And that's what Jesus says. You will always have the poor. And I believe this is important because, see, Mary was willing to give this to Jesus. If Jesus said, "Hey, you know what? Don't do this for me. Sell this and give it to the poor." Do you think she would have done it?
Yeah, I think she would have. Why? Because she already resolved in her heart, everything that I have, my inheritance, everything, I'm going to give to Jesus, and Jesus can do whatever he wants with it.
We need to be fully sold out for Jesus first. And then when God calls us to, "Hey, you know what? Instead of spending this time over here, I want you to go and love this person over here." Well, if we've already devoted that time to God, then that's not going to be a problem for us.
But our relationship with Jesus needs to come first. And then out of that, God will call us to love other people well. But the order is important. Love God and then love other people.
I'm going to invite up worship. Yes, please grab her, Mary. Thank you. I'm going to invite up worship. But guys, let's bring it in for our final section.
These steps of faith are incredibly important and are often got wrong. We need to learn at Jesus's feet because knowing who he is is better than trying to serve him, but not serving the real Jesus.
We need to go to him with everything because he cares about our real self, not a made-up version of ourself or a pretend version, but the real Jacob, the real you guys. He cares about you guys and wants your real self to be presented to him, not to hold those things back.
And then finally, we need to be fully sold out to him. Why? Because he needs to be number one in our life. Not just another number, not just another person, another thing to love, but the number one thing.
So worship, you can come on up. Let's give it up for Peyton. Thank you, Peyton. And those are the steps of faith of Mary's life. And I'm super happy I got to talk about them with you guys.
So guys, let's pray. Let's close. Let's pray. Let's close out with a song and then we're gonna break up into our breakout groups. Let's do it. We can get the lights, Jayden.
Thank you.
All right, Jesus, we thank you so much for this time. I pray that you'd help us to do those things, God, that we would listen at your feet and learn what you want us to learn.
And we would pray that you would help us and learn what you want from us so we can do that well. That we would present our real full self to you, God, that we would be fully loved by you.
And God, that we would just be fully sold out for you, Lord, that you'd be number one in our life, not number two or number three or anything else, but number one and all we have would be given to you.
And that you would call us to love other people well, but that you would be number one in our life. Thank you for this time. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Well, guys, let's stand.
