Did you ever have trouble staying awake at church? Mr. Bean did. Take a look (show Mr. Bean Falling Asleep at Church; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B1V1PFsyho).

For many in our culture, this is their only perception of worship. They see worship as just a church service, which has little relevance to life whatsoever, but worship is nothing like that at all!

Mark 14, where we get a picture of real worship.

Mark 14:3-9 “And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head. But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted? “For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply. But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. “For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. “She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial. “Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

When everybody else criticized this woman, Jesus praised her, because of her expressions of worship. And as such, she shows us what real worship is all about. If we truly worship Jesus then we will…

LOVE HIM SACRIFICIALLY.

We will go beyond the ordinary. We will overdo it to the point of “waste” in some people’s opinions.

That’s how this woman loved Jesus here.  The Book of John chapter 12 tells us that this woman is actually Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, the one Jesus raised from the dead.

They were having a dinner with Jesus as the special guest. Martha was busy in the kitchen, taking care of all the details of the meal while Mary chose to sit in the living room listening to Jesus. Well, that bothered Martha. In fact, Martha got so upset that she ran into the living room and told Jesus to rebuke Mary for not helping out.

I suppose Martha thought Mary was wasting her time. In the record of the apostle Mark, Jesus disciples are criticizing Mary for wasting her money. It seems that whenever we meet Mary in the Scriptures, she is wasting something – her time or her money – but Jesus praises such people.

To Martha, Jesus said, “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). To His disciples, Jesus said (vs.6), “Leave her alone… She has done a beautiful thing to me.”

Mary worshipped Jesus extravagantly – some would say wastefully. In verse 3 says, it was pure spikenard.  Spikenard is made from the dried leaves of a rare Himalayan plant. It was an expensive perfume of her day. Notice that Mary does not just dab it, like we would with good perfume, but breaks the jar and pours it all over Jesus’ head.

Charles Swindoll, in his one of his books about going beyond the expected, titled Living Above the Level of Mediocrity wrote, “in our day of emphasis on high-tech calculations and finely tuned budgets with persistent reminders of cost, restraint, and propriety (that is, never being guilty of doing anything outside the bounds of the ordinary), anything beyond the basics can be misconstrued as excessive. If you buy into that ever present Spartan philosophy, then everything you build will be functional, ordinary, and basic. Everything you purchase will be at the lowest cost. Everything you do will be average.

The problem is, too many of us, are content to get by with as little as we can.

On one of the early Apollo space projects, an engineer stuck his head inside the capsule and said to the team of astronauts who were getting ready to take off, “Well, how does it feel?”

With a grin, one of the astronauts replied, “It really makes you think twice in here when you realize everything in this whole project was constructed according to the lowest bid!” (Chuck Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p.68)

That’s the way a lot of people live their lives – according to the lowest bid; and sadly, that’s how too many of us worship Jesus. Let’s go way beyond the ordinary when it comes to showing Jesus how much we worship Him.

Give your all to Him. Give to the point where others may consider it a “waste,” for if we truly love the Lord, we will worship Him sacrificially and

WE SHOULD ALSO SURRENDER OUR ALL

That’s what Mary did here. The cost of her one act of worship was 300 denarii (vs.5), that’s more than a whole year’s wage. In today’s economy, that’s more than $44,564 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, August 14, 2018.

Mary’s act of worship cost a whole lot of money, but she willingly and gladly gave it away, because she understood that Jesus is so worthy.

In 2 Samuel 24, King David was given the opportunity to worship God for free. David wanted to buy Araunah’s threshing floor above his palace as a place of worship, but Araunah said, “Take it. And while you’re at it, take some of my oxen and some of my wood to make the appropriate offerings.”

But David said, “No, I insist on paying for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). In David’s mind, it wasn’t real worship if it wasn’t worthy to give.

If it is not worth much to you, it isn’t real worship. It may be religious ritual, but it is not a true expression of worship.

The Bible says, “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ DIED for us” (Rom. 5:8). That’s what love does.

He gave His life for us. He died in our place for our sins and rose again, so He could offer us eternal life as a free gift. Our part is to trust Him as our Savior and worship Him.  A believer can’t help but worship Him for the way He loved us.

Jack Eckerd, founder of the Eckerd Drugstore chain (now Rite Aid), was a believer and trusted Christ with His life. Shortly thereafter he retired and stepped down from company leadership. He was walking through one of the stores where copies of Playboy and Penthouse magazines blared at him from the magazine racks.  Eckerd called the president of the company and urged him to get rid of the pornographic magazines. The president protested, because those magazines brought in a big profit. Eckerd himself stood to lose a lot of money, because he was the largest stockholder, but he persisted and the offensive magazines were removed from all 1700 drugstores. When asked why he did it, Eckerd simply replied, “God wouldn’t let me off the hook!”

His worship for the Lord demanded a surrendered life. Eckerd had to do it, because he worshipped Jesus more than he loved money.

Tim Keller, pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York, shared a story about meeting with a woman who had just started attending his church.  She had never heard about the distinction between the gospel and religion, between grace and a works-based righteousness. She had never heard about God’s unconditional love. Instead, she thought that God accepts us only if we are good enough, and she told pastor Keller that the new message was scary.

Tim Keller asked her why it was scary and she replied: “If I was saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with ‘rights’ – I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by grace – then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.”

Tim Keller said, “She understood the dynamic of grace and gratitude. If when you have lost all fear of punishment you also lose all incentive to live a good, unselfish life, then the only incentive you ever had to live a decent life was fear. This woman could see immediately that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had an edge to it. She knew that if she was a sinner saved by grace, she was (if anything) more subject to the sovereign Lordship of God. She knew that if Jesus really had done all this for her, she would not be her own. She would joyfully, gratefully belong to Jesus, who provided all this for her at infinite cost to himself. (Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, Riverhead Books, 2008, pp. 189-190; www.PreachingToday.com)

It’s when we truly understand how much Christ loved us, we can’t help but sacrificially love Him for the way He loved us.

Isaac Watts put it this way: Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all. Now, it’s not because JESUS’ love for us demands it, no. His love is free! Rather, OUR worship for Jesus demands it. We give our all not because we HAVE to. We give our all because we WANT to out of our worship to Him in response to His love for us.

We need to worship Him sacrificially and we must be surrendered to Him; and finally, we will…

WORSHIP HIM OPENLY.

We will love him without shame In front of everybody else.

That’s how Mary loved Jesus. The normal custom in her day was to serve the men at the table and then back away to eat in another room. A Jewish woman never reclined at a table full of men. She stayed away and kept her thoughts to herself. Not Mary. Very openly, in front of a table full of men, she expressed her love for Jesus.

As a result, she opened herself up to public ridicule and criticism, and they gave it to her with both barrels. Verse 5 says, “They scolded her.”

But that didn’t matter to her. She was willing to risk the public ridicule and shame, because she loved Jesus so much.

And we will do the same if we love Jesus as much as Mary did. We will open ourselves up to such criticism to show “worth ship” to the Lord.

I know that’s hard, consider what President Ted Roosevelt said: It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbles or how the doer of deeds might have done better. The credit belongs to the man (or the woman) who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. (“The Man in the Arena” – April 23, 1910 – Theodore Roosevelt speech)

In Jesus day, those “cold and timid souls” were the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They were the critics who knew “neither victory nor defeat”, but among them was Judas, one of Jesus’ own disciples. From John 12, we find that it was Judas who initiated the criticism against Mary. And here in Mark 14, Mary’s lavish love is set against the backdrop of Judas’ betrayal.

Mark 14:1-2 “After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take Him by trickery and put Him to death. But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar of the people.”

Mark 14:10-11”Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. So he sought how he might conveniently betray Him.”  – i.e., to hand Him over at a time when there were no crowds around.

Mary worshipped her Lord publicly, openly, But Judas betrayed Him privately. Mary worshipped Jesus sacrificially – more than a year’s wages. Judas sold his Lord cheaply – for the price of a slave. Mary was criticized for her devotion – “they scolded her verse 4.”  Judas was praised for his deceit – “they were glad and gave him money, verse 11.”

Temporarily, it seemed that Judas got the better deal, but we know better, don’t we? Here, Mary is accused of wasting money (vs.4). But Jesus called Judas “the son of perdition” in John 17 – literally, the son of waste (same word). Judas accused Mary of wasting her money, but Judas himself wasted his life. He ended up hanging himself, spilling his guts all over a potter’s field.

Our celebration of Communion exposes, the expense, and extravagant acts of what Jesus did for us. We have assembled to declare worth-ship to Jesus Christ.

Isaac Watts wrote this hymn some 300 years ago. As he thought about what Jesus did for him on the cross, he wrote:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all!

We celebrate communion with the passage of 1 Corinthians chapter 11:23-26:

23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread;

 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”

 25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

To conclude our communion together we take a collection. This offering is for the needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is a voluntary offering and we ask that you give as you are led.  We base our giving on I John 3:17-24…

“But whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?  Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.  And this is His commandment that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.”