Mark 14:1-11  Holy Week      Wednesday

  On Wednesday of the last week of Jesus’ life, before He was crucified, the attention turns away from the Temple and the conflicts with the Jewish leaders and also from the demands of the thousands of pilgrims who were visiting Jerusalem for the Passover and the Feast and who crowded around Jesus for the help and encouragement they derived from His teaching. It seems that Jesus spent this day with his disciples and friends in the little town of Bethany and in the evening they all got together to enjoy their evening meal in the home of a man named Simon, called Simon the leper to distinguish him from all the other Simons in Judea .

  At this meal we see on a small scale something that is regularly happening in the kingdom of grace. Here is the Redeemer surrounded by various trophies of His grace. First, we have Simon the leper, the healed man, because had he still been a leper none of the others would have been in his company. Then we have Lazarus, the risen man, the brother of Martha and Mary whom Jesus raised from the dead. Also present is the man that leaned on Jesus' breast, nearest to his Lord, and that other "son of thunder," James, the brother of John, who was honoured to drink of his Lord's cup, and be baptized with the baptism which He was baptized with, the man of impulsive but robust devotion to Christ; and here was Simon Peter, the man of commanding energy. These all demonstrate the different types of Christian character that you find gathered around the Lord Jesus. Right in the middle of them was one who was very different from the rest. He was a devil incarnate. He is a type of that traitorous spirit that has plagued the Christian Church from before it was born and from which it has hardly ever been quite free. The Church still attracts those who want to use it for their own purposes and we should be on our guard against them.

  Redeemed womanhood in its two great types-active and passive, or doing and feeling is also represented in that group of disciples. Both of these women were active in serving the Saviour and both loved Him deeply although the hands were the chief characteristic in one case and the heart in the other. What kind of Church is it  without both? But it is Mary that Jesus singles out for special mention.

  Active service laid the foundations of the Church at its beginning, and has ever since maintained and preserved it. Active service rolled back the tide of corruption when it settled over the Church, and restored the church’s evangelical character. The active services of woman have been in every age of enthusiastic Christianity as precious as they have been beautiful.            But it is the service of love that Christ specially values.

Love to Christ transfigures the humblest services. All who have a heart, value love of the Lord Jesus above the most costly mechanical performance. It encourages us to find Him endorsing that principle as His own standard in judging of character and deeds. Works of usefulness are never to be set in opposition to the promptings of self-sacrificing love, and both are to be equally valued and respected.

  Think of the number of starving families those "three hundred pence" could have fed, Judas might have exclaimed, if he had been given time to enlarge upon this waste of money but Jesus gives us a different principle to go by when face with conflicting duties. The opportunity that suddenly and surprisingly comes to our hands at a given moment is to be preferred to that which can be done at any time. "You have the poor always with you; but Me ye have not always." The Lord Jesus has a high value of the worth of His own presence with His people, and wants them to be alive to it too. There is a sense in which He is with us always, even to the world's end (Matt 28:20) but there are special opportunities which come to us of which it may be said, "Me you have not always;" and the altogether best thing to do is to take of these when the present themselves to us, even though it interferes with other duties, which, however important, will still be waiting for us when the opportunity to spend quality time with Jesus has passed. To those who are concerned with the little they can do for Christ, there is tremendous consolation in that testimony borne to Mary, "She has done what she could"! The poorest and humblest of Christ's loving followers may, on this principle, rise as high in the esteem of Christ as the wealthiest and most gifted of those who move in the wider spheres of Christian usefulness. "If there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what a man has, and not according to what he does not have" (2 Cor 8:12 ).

  As Jesus thought about the universal spread of His Gospel, even while He was approaching the lowest depth of His humiliation, so He regarded the facts of His earthly history as constituting the substance of "The Gospel," and the proclamation of those facts as the "preaching of this Gospel." It is in this context that He tells the assembled friends that what Mary did in anointing Him with the precious perfume will be spoken of wherever the Gospel is preached. Preachers are to make their whole preaching revolve around the facts concerning the life, death resurrection and Coming Again of Jesus. The

  Judas’ complaint about the waste of Mary’s expensive ointment and his willingness to sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver is thought by some to be a sudden decision hastily arrived at but the study of its different stages will quickly dispel that delusion.

First, covetousness being his master-passion, the Lord allowed it to reveal itself by entrusting him with "the bag" (John 12:6), as treasurer to Himself and the Twelve. Next, in the discharge of that ministry he began to pilfer, and became a thief, appropriating the funds for his own use. Then Satan, seeing his opportunity put it into Judas heart to betray him. Satan may have put the thought into Judas’ mind that here was an opportunity  to earn some extra money and possibly Judas thought that when the danger became extreme, the One who had performed so many miracles, might miraculously save Himself. The next stage was the conversion of that thought into the settled purpose when the opportunity arose to do it. That opportunity took place that night at the house of Simon the leper; from which he probably withdrew in a rage and this put down was perhaps all that was needed to decide him.

The opportunity to carry it out did not happen until later when sitting at the Last Supper. Satan entered into him (John 13:27 ) and his conscience now effectually stifled, only rose, after the deed, to drive him to despair. These facts should sound out a warning to everyone. Scripture has much to say about covetousness and the way Satan will use it to lead people astray. "They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows". (1 Tim 6:9-10) "Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith." (1 Peter 5:8-9) "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”. (James 4:7.)

In closing notice how Jesus used Mary’s love gift to announce to the Twelve that in two more days He would be betrayed and be crucified. At that very moment, perhaps, the Jewish authorities were assembled in the palace of the high priest, trying to work out how they might put Him to death and Judas, who had stolen away from the rest of the Twelve, and got into the Council, was just concluding his bargain. Every step of the process lay open to Jesus and He disclosed to those closest to Him that the final consummation of His Life’s work was near at hand. We see here, on the one hand, the incomparable peace in the heart of Jesus, and on the other, the harmonious working of man's perfectly free will, and the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. What men freely decide to do shall come to pass for God’s divine purpose.

"For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to Whom be glory forever. Amen."