Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Is Your Faith Costing You? | Mark | Mark 14.3-9

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

What does your faith look like to the rest of the world? How do you display it? See how this woman showed her devotion in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+14.3-9&version=ESV (Mark 14.3-9) as https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastor Keith Simon) continues our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/mark/ (Mark). Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-to-beat-digital-distraction/ (How to Beat Digital Distraction) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/is-jesus-worth-it-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-14-25-35/ (Is Jesus Worth It?) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. If this podcast has been helping you in your walk with God, would you take five seconds to help us? Hop onto Twitter and follow our new Twitter account at TMBT Podcast. If you go there, you can see our latest episodes. You can also follow Keith and I and send us messages. We'd love to follow you back and see what's happening in your life.

Right now we're asking, who is Jesus? I have some breaking news. My breaking news is that the phrase breaking news is way overused. Way overused. You can say the same thing about the phrase news alert. Today, breaking news is used to introduce us to stories like, hey, guess what, guys, there are people shopping on Black Friday. Well, of course they are.

It's one of the biggest shopping days in the United States. When everything is amazing, everything is breaking news, when everything is unprecedented and historic, how do you set apart that which is truly historic? The beginning of Mark chapter 14 tells us a story about a woman who actually deserves all the hyperbolic language she receives. In verse 9 of Mark 14, Jesus says, Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her. Wow. Who is this woman? And what has she done to deserve that kind of recognition from Jesus? Well, what's crazy about it is that Mark doesn't tell us her name. All we know is that

she surrendered everything she had to Jesus. Let's start back at the beginning of the story. This is the last week of Jesus's life. The religious leaders are plotting to kill him. It's not the pagans who were seeking to kill Jesus, but the religious people. In fact, at the end of this story, Judas leaves Jesus and offers to help his opponents by betraying his friend. The church tends to think that the enemy is someone else. The enemy is out there somewhere. Maybe it's the culture or the media or the atheists or those trying to squash religious liberties. If we're always looking outside of us, we will probably fail to see the enemy on the inside. Judas's betrayal reminds us that proximity to Jesus doesn't guarantee faithfulness.

Mark 14 begins in the home of Simon the Leper, who lives in a small town named Bethany. It's right outside of Jerusalem. There's a good chance that this is the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and Simon the leper is their father. Maybe I should call him Simon the former leper, because if he still had the disease, he wouldn't have been able to be in Bethany hosting a party. So it's reasonable to believe that this gathering, is a party for Jesus. He's the guest of honor. It's reasonable to believe that he's healed Simon from the

leprosy, because we also know that Jesus resurrected Simon's son Lazarus from the grave. Suddenly, a woman gets up and starts pouring expensive perfume on Jesus. Mark stumbles all over himself to convey the value of this perfume. He says it came in an alabaster jar and it was very expensive because it was made of pure nard. Nard is a relative to a relative. relatively rare aromatic oil extracted from the root of an Indian herb. The guests were shocked because this nard that she poured on Jesus cost more than a year's wages. It's likely that this nard was a family heirloom that had been passed down to her. It was probably the most valuable thing she owned. Mark says that she didn't pour the oil in a measured way. She didn't give it grudgingly. She didn't just

pour out a few drops. She didn't need to be urged to do this or coaxed in. to it? Nope. Out of her own free will, she broke the jar, which of course means it couldn't be used again, and none of the nard could be kept. She wasn't saving it. She wasn't rationing it. She wasn't giving it reluctantly. She was all in. The disciples are a bunch of knuckleheads. They see what this woman is doing, and they are angry and indignant. They publicly scold this woman. You can imagine that changed the mood of the party. It went from being festive to being tense. The disciples said that she was wasting this valuable nard. It could have been sold to help the poor.

We don't know if they had a genuine concern for the poor, or if the poor were just pawns in their game of self-interest. They see the costly devotion as a waste. If you have ever served Jesus, you know that some people's spiritual gift is criticism. Some people just have the gift of discouragement, and they're so good at pointing out the fact that you're not doing what you should be doing. You spent too much time on that. You spent too little time on it. You did too much. You did too little. You didn't do it well enough. You did it too well. Whatever it is, they just criticize. And that's the spirit of Judas Ascariot. This unnamed woman loves Jesus. Judas is doing nothing, but he reserves his energy to criticize the one who is serving. He criticizes the woman who is honoring Jesus. Some people are like that. Jesus comes to this woman's defense.

According to the disciples, she has done a wasteful thing, but according to Jesus, she's done a beautiful thing. Do you see the value of Jesus isn't always seen by everyone? And that means that if you follow hard after Jesus, if you surrender your life to him, you're going to look a bit odd to some people, maybe a lot of people. That's because they don't see the value of Jesus like you do. They think you're wasting your life serving him. The world has never really had a problem with faith in moderation. It doesn't have a problem with too much wealth or too much power or too much sex or too much influence,

but it has a problem with too much of Jesus. Fervent devotion is the right response to truly understanding who Jesus is. This woman brought her most valuable possession to Jesus. Christians are in the process of bringing their whole life to Jesus. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with.

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