Overflow Daily...ish: Sacrificial Worship (100th Blog Post!!!)


3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 
John 12:3–5 

This week marks the beginning of Lent for 2019 and it is a beautiful church tradition that has been celebrated for nearly 2,000 years; originally lasting only as a 2-3 day fast. Generally, it is thought of as a time of self-reflection, fasting, and denial but the reality is that Lent is so much more than that. At Overflow Church, the theme that we are weaving throughout each week is that Lent brings us to repentance and repentance produces renewed and grateful lives (To see this unpacked check out our first sermon in our Lent series: 3/3/2019 Lent Sermon). During Lent, we are more acutely aware of the fact that we have exchanged the glory of God and have gone pursuing lesser things, we have turned our gaze away from the beauty of God and towards little gods which will never bring us ultimate satisfaction, joy, or peace.

We are as C.S. Lewis described “half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

In this passage in John's Gospel we distinctly see two forms of worship. We first meet with Mary, who displays what sacrificial worship looks like. She breaks open her perfume and anoints the feet of Jesus understanding exactly what she is doing. She is humbling herself before her Lord, and she has counted the costs. A denarius in those days represented a day's wage and even with a cost of 300 days of labor, she holds nothing back and unashamedly wipes his feet with her hair. In those days, respectable women would not let their hair loose and this act of worship shows her "unrestrained love and devotion to Jesus that went against personal cost and concern for perception." (Holman Concise Bible Commentary)

On the other hand, we read of Judas. He too is a worshipper, but not one of Jesus. Which is crazy for us to imagine because of all the people, him being one of the twelve, he would have been a very likely candidate to be a worshipper of Him. And yet, verse 6 reveals the true object of his worship. "He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it." Judas was a worshipper of self and in his greed, he worshipped his idol of wealth to find true joy and satisfaction.

In Lent we are reminded of the fact that we are all worshipping something with our time, lives, money, etc. My prayer is that you will take stock of those little idols in your lives and remove them from their pedestals and turn to worship the one true God of the past, of the present, of the future. Worship your king.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Alex

Link to Lent Sermon: 3/3/2019 Lent Sermon
Follow along in our daily Lent Devotions: Church Seasons Booklet

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