“Fragrance or Stench” April 8, 2018

11 Apr “Fragrance or Stench” April 8, 2018

4/8/18    John 12:1-8     “Fragrance or Stench”

Do you ever get stuck in a rut?  I know that I have from time to time in my life.  Years ago one of the worst nights of the week for me was Sunday night.  I was never a big TV watcher and that was all there was to do.  There was a time in TV land when they only ran their poorer shows on Sunday night.  And of course we didn’t have 1000 stations like they do now so that wasn’t an option.  I would always be trying to find something to do on Sunday night so it wasn’t so boring.  Later in life I found that I was the one that was boring, not life.  It wasn’t until I found Jesus about 25 years ago that this went away.  It’s really amazing how Jesus can just turn your life around.  Anyway, if you have bad days like this or maybe it’s something else that always gets you down, then do this.  I guarantee that this will help.  Confess your sins to Jesus and ask Him to be Lord and Savior of your life.  There is just something about Jesus that makes everything better.  Everything will be a little sweeter.  Today we are going to look at the fragrance of Jesus which you will gain if you accept Him.  Let’s see if this will change your life.  Oh, by the way, the change will be one for the better, guaranteed!

This is a true story that happened in Tennessee as told by Michael Hensley.  A pastor/bus driver for a local church knocked on a door in a poor section of town.  A 9 year old boy answered the door and the pastor asked if his parents were home.  The boy said that his parents leave every weekend and have him take care of his little brother.  This was hard for the pastor to believe.  He was asked in and sat on a couch with the springs showing through.  The house showed their poverty.

The pastor asked, “Where do you go to church?”  The boy replied that he had never been to church in his life.  After some more talk the pastor finally said, “More important than going to church is the greatest story ever told.  Have you heard it?”  The reverend then proceeded to share the Gospel with the lad.  At the end he asked if the boy would like to receive a free gift from God.  The boy said, “You bet!”  They both got on their knees and he received Jesus as his Savior.  The pastor then asked if he could pick up the two boys for church tomorrow.

When the pastor got there the boys were still asleep.  He had to wake them and help them to get dressed and ready for church.  The children were amazed at how big everything was and they were clueless as to what was going on around them.  We need to remember this.  Many unchurched people have never been in church so we have to help them.  Anyway, the boys watched with interest the whole time.  Then it came time to pass the collection plate.

Once again it took a while before the boy realized what people were doing.  He searched and searched but could find nothing to put in the plate.  Finally, he had to let the plate go by.  But he continued to watch it as the solemn ushers made their way through the crowd.

The ushers were just about done when the boy jumped up and ran to them.  Then he took the plate from the usher and sat it down in the middle of the aisle and he stepped into the center of the plate.  Then he lifted his head skyward and said, “Jesus, I don’t have anything to give you today, but just me.  I give you me!”

This story is a great parallel to the Scripture lesson this morning as they are both talk about extravagant love.  Let’s look at the Scripture a little closer.  If we look at the cross references to the other Gospels, we find that this is not the home of Mary and Martha.  It is the home of Simon, the leper.  In those days no one would go to a leper’s house unless he had been healed and maybe not even then.  One could guess that Simon owed Jesus a great deal as he had been healed by Jesus.  Also in attendance was Lazarus.  He also owed his life to Jesus as he had been raised from the dead only about a week earlier.

So what we probably have here is a celebration meal.  We have Simon celebrating being made whole again and Lazarus celebrating coming out of the hole of the tomb.  There was probably quite the conversation going on in that house.  It would have been interesting to have been a mouse in the corner.

Today there are four points I would like to make about the extravagant love that Mary demonstrates as she pours out expensive perfume all over Jesus.  The first point is that extravagant love is precious to us.  If you are going to honor God with an offering then it must have value to you.  And Mary certainly meets this criterion.  She gives something that is worth a whole years’ worth of wages.  That had to be some kind of perfume.  I think that the most expensive perfume we have today is about $13,000 an ounce.  It would probably be similar.

And speaking of today, how and what do you give to God that is precious to you?  It seems for the most part, we cannot even give a tithe which is 10% of our wages or earnings.  There are many excuses as to why we don’t give but they are just excuses.  Anyway, this would be normal giving and not extravagant giving.  After all, everything we have is God’s and He only asks for 10% in return.  From my experience, you will be blessed if you give to God a tithe.  The more you honor Him through giving, the more He honors you.

But just imagine what could happen if you gave more, a lot more.  The blessings would go on and on.  There would be no stopping them.  Malachi tells us in 3:10, that God will open the floodgates as He pours out the blessings.  People, these are floodgates!  You can be buried in blessings.  What a way to live a life!  Everywhere you go you would run into blessings.  That is the difference between the person who has everything and many of us.  He has Jesus Christ and is totally faithful even in his giving.  I think that is something that we should all be striving for as we mature in Christ.  Give to Him first.  Then let Him take care of all the rest.

And this can only start if you give yourself to Jesus.  It can only start if you accept Jesus as your Savior and ask Him to live in your heart.  If you have not done this please do so today.  We hear about untimely deaths every day.  They even happen in our community.  Please and I beg of you because your eternal life is at stake, do this today.

I think that Mary had done this even if she did not completely understand.  I would like to draw your attention to the three times that we met Mary in the Scripture so far.  All three times she is at the feet of Jesus.  She listened to him in Luke, she fell to His feet after Lazarus had died, and she wipes his feet with her hair.  This is the beautiful part of her love to her Savior.  She gets it but she may not understand it.

And that is what is so important for us also.  You do not have to understand everything about God or even very much about Him.  You only have to accept Him.  If you accept Him, then He will help you every step of the way after that.  It is like I said a couple of weeks ago.  If Jesus were 100 steps away from you, all you have to do is take the first step.  Our loving God will take all the rest.  That is a promise that you can rely on no matter what.  I get excited talking about these things because they are so good that they cannot be described.   Now I had better move on or I will never get to the other three points I want to make.

The next point I would like to make is that extravagant love is pleasant to others.  Can you imagine what that room or even the whole house smelled like?  Everyone in the area had to enjoy this lovely fragrance.  Just think that if I had a vessel of perfume today that cost $13,000 and I poured it out over your head.  First the people close to you would notice.  Then everyone in a larger area would notice.  Soon even the people in the basement or upstairs would notice.  A bottle of perfume that expensive would be pleasing to people in a huge area unless you are allergic to it.  And no one is allergic to Jesus unless Satan owns you and that can even be cast off.

Anyway you are to be like the boy in the opening story and stand in the middle of the collection plate to give yourself to Jesus.  People will notice the new aroma about you.  Have you ever been around someone that is totally on fire for the Lord?  It is something that you pick up on right away.  Their aroma gives them away.  There is just something about them that generates a fire in everyone.  It is their extravagant love.

People everywhere in this country are searching for something called the truth.  I mentioned this before about a craze called the Secret.  People will fall for anything if they think it is the truth.  So here is a novel idea.  Let’s give them the truth.  Let’s not tell stories about the truth.  Let’s give them the real deal.  And that real deal will be you and I as we give off the real aroma of our extravagant love for Jesus Christ.  I get excited talking about Jesus.  I have never ever been in a place where people do not stop and listen when I present the truth of Jesus Christ.  They may not do anything about it, but they listen and I plant the seed.  They are hungry.  They are starving.  So let’s give them the feast of the truth.  Do I hear an amen?  Amen.

The third thing I would like to bring out is that extravagant love is perplexing and even annoying to some.  The fragrance that is pleasing and wonderful to God, is a stench to others, especially the ones the devil owns.  Notice what Judas says, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?”  This sure sounds like a good idea but we know that Judas was a thief and cared nothing for the poor.  This whole thing was a stench to him.

We can see this just about everywhere we look today.  If we dare to bring up the name of Jesus anywhere, it is offensive.  We can’t say it in our federal government, we can’t say it in our state governments, and we surely can’t say it in our schools.  There have been cases where it would have been better if a child had gotten into a fight than to bring up the name of Jesus.  What in the world is wrong with us?

I have another illustration that happened at a ministerial meeting.  This is a group of ministers meeting to discuss whatever it is on their minds.  We were talking about a new camp someplace that did not have a purpose yet.  It was located in an unreached people group area that was very impoverished.  The hierarchy of the church felt that we should be only mission oriented because we made a deal with the people that we would not try changing their religious culture.

Now it is a very good thing to mission to these people.  They need help.  Missions are good.  I got into trouble when I said that maybe we should have some sort of evangelical presence there so that the few Christians that are around would have a place to worship.  That way we could send some of their own people back into their culture with the Good News of Jesus Christ.  I thought that it was a logical idea.

Initially, no one was on my side on this issue.  I thought that we should bring the fragrance of Jesus to these people.  The other pastors thought that it was a stench.  It was only after they thought about it for a while that two of them came to think that it was a very good idea.  Sometimes I feel that I am going up against a brick wall.  I praise Jesus that He gives me the strength to get up and try again.

The last thing I would like to bring up is that extravagant love is pleasing to Jesus.  Jesus had the only voice in favor of what Mary had done.  He says in a parallel passage in Matt. 26:10, “Why are you bothering this woman?  She has done a beautiful thing to me.”

Jesus was impressed.  Mary was so thankful for Jesus bringing her brother back that she was extravagant in her love.

Jesus remembers the things that we do for Him.  He will forget our confessed sin but will always remember our goodness toward Him.  That is His promise to us.  It is demonstrated in this story about the perfume.  Perfume that is that expensive will last a long time, especially when a whole jar is poured over one’s head.  This wonderful fragrance was with Jesus at the triumphant entry.  It still lingered on him at the last supper and at the Garden of Gethsemane.  It was there during the trial and as they whipped Him.  It was there at the cross.

Any time we show our love for Jesus whether it is extravagant or not, He will know and remember.  This is how we are to live our lives.  There is a story told by Robert Rust.  When he was about 12 years old his family and he went on a camping trip.  One day early in the vacation, his younger sister wandered off and got lost.  Everyone was frantic as they searched for her.  After about an hour, a teenager found his sister near a pond and brought her safely back to the camp.  12 year old Robert was so thankful to the teenager for returning his sister that he gave him all his spending money for the vacation.  He was that thankful.

Today I ask, “How much love do you have for Jesus?”  God loved you so much that He sent His Son to die on the cross so that you may live on in eternity.  Do not be afraid to love Him back.  Do not be afraid to do His good works.  There is not a more pleasant feeling in the world than when God touches you in appreciation.  And Jesus wants to touch each and every one of you today.  Let’s join Him in  His world as we show this broken world the way to the truth.  Praise the Lord and thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.