God does love you. You know that, right? You’ve probably heard it thousand times and a thousand different ways. But… Let’s be honest here, aren’t there times when you’re not sure? Aren’t there times when you question it? Aren’t there times that just have to ask, “Does he really love me?” “Why?” “Why does he love me?” We question it. We don’t believe it. Over the next five weeks, we’re going to be in a brand new series that asks the question, “Why.” This message is based on Mark 14:1-10. To read it, click here.
God does love you. You know that, right? You’ve probably heard it thousand times and a thousand different ways. But… Let’s be honest here, aren’t there times when you’re not sure? Aren’t there times when you question it? Aren’t there times that just have to ask, “Does he really love me?” “Why?” “Why does he love me?” We question it. We don’t believe it. Over the next five weeks, we’re going to be in a brand new series that asks the question, “Why.” We’re going to look at the events of Jesus’ last couple of days, actually ending up in five weeks at the empty tomb, and we’re going to look at circumstances in the lives of Jesus and those closest to Him, things that happened that had them asking some of these same questions that we struggle with. On the night of Jesus’ arrest, after He shares a Passover Seder with His disciples, they go out to the garden on the Mount of Olives, and He struggles in prayer, and we’ve all struggled with prayer and wondered why God doesn’t answer my prayers. Then when Jesus is standing in front of Pilate and the mob is yelling “crucify him, crucify him” and Pilate asks, Why? What evil has he done?” We’ve struggled with the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” When Jesus was on the cross, he asked the question, “Why has thou forsaken me?” We’ve all struggled with that question, “Why do I feel so distant from God?” And on that first Easter morning, when the women were on their way to the tomb before they discovered the tomb was empty, they were distraught, and probably asking themselves the question, “Why does my life seem so hopeless?” I bet there’s been times you’ve asked that one, too. All of us at times struggle with these “Why” questions. We’ve all asked these. Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God feel so distant when I need him most? Why does my life seem so hopeless? Why? Why? There is another question, one we’re going to examine this morning, that I think is greater than all the rest, because until we understand this one; we’re never going to understand the answers to the rest of them. None of the answers to the other questions will make any sense unless we really understand the answer to the first one. And here is the question: Why does God love me? And no you don’t have to earn it. And no you don’t have to work for it? And no you can’t join enough churches, you can get baptized so many times the tadpoles know you by name. That’s not going to get you to in to heaven. That doesn’t get you forgiven. To begin to understand that God really does love you, I want to share two quick verses with you. First, let’s go to Romans 5:8, “God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Does God love you? Yes: God loves you so much he let His Son die on a cross for you. And you know what else, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done with your life, because He did this before you believed in Him, while you were still sinners. You don’t earn God’s love, God loved you before you even knew Him. How much did He love you? Enough to let His Son die for you. There are few people I love so much I would give up my life for, but there isn’t anybody I love enough to give up my son’s life for. God loves you so much he gave up His Son to die for you. But let’s also look at Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Some of you, if you looked at all the circumstances of your life, your sickness, your illness, your job layoff, your finances, what’s happening in the world, what’s happening with you personally, if you just added everything up, you could easily come to the conclusion that God doesn’t love me. But you see, once you know he loves you, you can trust him. You can walk by faith knowing He loves you. When you really understand that he loves you, you can begin to understand why tough things come, you can understand why prayers aren’t always answered, you can have hope, real life changing hope. Here’s the thing you need to understand, if God was ever going to back out on you, it would have been at Calvary. It would have been at the cross. If God carried through with giving up His Son, there isn’t anything He’s not going to do. Still, we ask these why questions, don’t we? We struggle with them. You know why these “Why” questions seem bigger than life? It’s because we don’t understand life. Because we think this is the only life we’ve got. And so, when a loved one dies, when something happens that’s wrong, I’m thinking that it’s so bad on this side, and it is bad on this side, but there’s another side, there is something else. In our reading Mary understood it. There wasn’t anything that she wouldn’t do for Jesus Christ because she knew Jesus was about to give His life for her. She wasn’t trying to prove anything, she wasn’t trying to achieve anything, she wasn’t working for anything, she was responding to the gospel, to God’s love for her, that’s what she was doing. And what she did was a huge sacrifice. She poured perfume worth over a year’s salary, on Jesus’ head and feet. A year’s salary! That’s huge! If you don’t think that what she gave was such a big deal, I want to encourage you to go home and write out a check to the church for a year’s salary. That’s a huge sacrifice. Talk about sacrificially giving. Here’s the thing Mary teaches us when she does this. Remember this: “The degree of my sacrifice is to the same degree I understand how much He loves me.” The more I understand His love for me, the more I’m willing to sacrifice for Him. If we really understand how much He loves us, we’re going to freely give. We’re going to be radically generous. Mary understood this – Mary was radically generous. When we understand this, we will be radically generous. We’re going to freely give of our time to the church, because the church is the body of Christ, it’s His body. We’re going to freely give in the offerings to support His body, His church. If we really understand that He loves us, there isn’t anything I’m not willing to do, because I know that there wasn’t anything He wasn’t willing to do for me. Okay, let’s get to our reading in Mark 14. There is a quiet a crowd gathered here, there at least seventeen people in this house. We have Simon the Leper, we don’t know if Simon has a family, we have Mary, Martha and Lazarus, we have the disciples, and we have Jesus, so there’s at least a house full. But this morning, I’m only concerned with the reactions of three people, because that’s all we need to see to make sense of this. I want you to see how these three respond, Mary, Judas, and Jesus. When we see Mary, we see Mary’s devotion. Every time she comes to Jesus she is listening to him, she’s at his feet, she’s worshiping him. Mary was the one that her sister tried to get her in trouble. Jesus and the disciples are over at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus’ house, and Martha’s in the kitchen working so hard she doesn’t think she’ll ever get this meal on the table, so she yells out the kitchen door, Jesus, tell Mary I need help in here, I shouldn’t have to do all this! Where was Mary? She was in sitting at Jesus’ feet. And here with this perfume. This is an act of worship. Her love is extreme. Her gift is extreme. It’s a year’s wages, folks. In 2 Samuel 24:24, King David wants to build an altar to offer a sacrifice to the Lord, so he goes to the owner to buy the land. The owner wants to just give it to him, or let him use it, he even offers him the animals to sacrifice, but David said, “No, I insist on paying you for it, I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings which cost me nothing.” I won’t give anything to the Lord that didn’t cost me something. Jesus gave his very life for you, what we give him should be worth something. This gift was a year’s salary. What Mary is saying here is this, “my savings, for his saving.” She got it, she understood in a matter of days Jesus is going to give up His life for her. To save her. So she thought, I’m going to give it. Jesus gave it all. I’m going to give it all, too. Why? He loves me so much he’s going to die for me. To save me. How many put $2 or $3 in the offering plate and thought that was good? Don’t raise your hands, I don’t really want to know. For your life, I don’t think so. If you really understand it, you’ll realize there’s nothing you can give that would be too much. You can give it all, compared to what He gave you, nothing you have is too much. She knows He’s going to die. And what she does is extreme. It’s even reckless. As soon as she does it, everybody says woe, hey wait a minute, why this waste, this is reckless, Jesus says, yea, I know. Isn’t it beautiful. He saw her devotion. Extreme, reckless, devotion. So we see Mary’s devotion, now let’s look at Judas’ reaction, really Judas’ disgust. Mark tells us several of them were objecting, in John’s gospel, only Judas is mentioned. In John 12:4-5, we see, “One of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, ‘Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?’” John later said, in verse 6, “He didn’t 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.” But the mentality is that an extravagant gift given to Jesus is a waste. You know when a city wants to spend two or three hundred million dollars on a new stadium so people can play football very few people say that’s a waste. Some do, but when you look at the money generated by that stadium, the money spent at the games, the resulting economic boost is considered worth the investment. Build a prison, nobody wants to spend the money on a new prison, but they know it’s needed, so it’s not a waste. You can build a hospital; when people see that the advances in medicine are now going to available to more people, nobody says that’s a waste. Let me tell you what a waste is, it’s anything you do that’s not done for Jesus. That’s a waste. God wants you to give your life to Jesus and keep serving him. That’s not a waste, that’s worship. Judas didn’t care about Mary, all Judas cared about was money. Generous people? They get it. They understand the gospel. They understand God’s love. So we saw Mary’s devotion, we saw Judas’ disgust, now let’s look at Jesus’ response, and there are really two responses. The first is a sense of disappointment. Leave her alone, why are you bothering her. He’s disappointed because here is someone who went out of her way to show love and devotion to Him, and His disciples give her a hard time. The chosen few who followed Him everywhere. Did they do a beautiful thing for Him? No. And then when she does, they give her a hard time. They were supposed to get it. But they didn’t. Mary got it, and they gave her a hard time. Then you see a sense of gratitude. She’s done a beautiful thing, this beautiful thing is the same word translated in Ephesians 2:10, as a good work. She’s done a good work, a good thing, a beautiful thing. Ephesians says “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We were created to do good works, beautiful things – and how did Jesus define them? Extravagant gifts, radical worship, and extreme devotion to Christ. Our question for today is, “Why does God love me?” I haven’t answered that yet. Because to be honest with you, I don’t have an answer. I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t why he loves you, I don’t even know why he loves me. But I know He does. I don’t know why. I didn’t earn it. I didn’t do the right things, I didn’t say the right things. All I know is that He does. And He’s showed me in so many different ways. Before you were even born, He declared His love for you. And He’s going to love you forever, and nothing you can do will ever change that. There is a number 4 in your notes, a place to record your response to the truths you heard today. How will you respond? Will you respond with good works, beautiful things – extravagant gifts, radical worship, extreme devotion to Jesus? Or are you going to continue to live life day by day, fighting the battles that each day brings… So many live this way. So many focus on the problems, on the battles. But if we focus on the battles, if we focus on the problems, if we focus on all the things that are wrong, that’s all we’ll see. And we’ll never see the Christ who came to deliver us. Instead, focus on Christ, live extreme, be radical in your worship, and be truly devoted to Jesus.
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