A Problem of Ecology

The reading is taken, excuse me, from St. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 26, the first 16 verses. When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, as you know the Passover is two days away and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him.

But not during the feast, they said, or there may be a riot among the people. While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant.

Why this waste, they asked. This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor. Aware of this, Jesus said to them, why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.

The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. She poured this perfume on my body. She did it to prepare me for burial.

I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her. Then one of the twelve, the one called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and asked, what are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you? So they counted out for him 30 silver coins. From then on, Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

Have your Bibles open up the passage that my secretary read. And then I want to bring to you a couple of verses and you'll see the reason later on from the Psalms, from Psalm 41, where we read, Blessed is he who has regard for the weak. The Lord delivers him or her.

These pronouns, masculine, cover both sexes. Blessed is he, her, who has regard for the weak. The Lord delivers them in times of trouble.

The Lord will protect them and preserve their life. He will bless them in the land and not surrender them to the desire of their foes. The Lord will sustain them on their sick bed and restore them from their bed of illness.

I want to talk to you about a problem of ecology. And the suggestion shouts at you in terms of subject matter from the eighth verse, why this waste, Matthew 26, 8, why this waste? They ask, this perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor. There's one unique factor about McDonald's in Moscow over against Worthing or any other place which is graced, if that's the right word, by this celebrated restaurant chain.

You don't find any plastic knives and forks pushed in what the Americans call the trash bin. Everything's taken away. You never need to tell the Soviets, waste not, want not.

You don't have to talk about recycling because they've always been recycling. It seems to me that when you look at the Word of God, there's certainly more than just a hint of teaching given that it's wrong to waste. Our Lord Jesus, when He turned bread and fish into a much greater quantity than was there naturally as the lads and the disciples put them in His hands, He ensured that having fed 5,000 and 4,000 people, all the fragments that were left over were gathered together so there would be no waste.

It's a bad thing to waste food, a bad thing to waste any of the earth's resources. And here there is a suggestion made on the part of some insensitive men that there is a wasteful activity which they criticize. And our Lord says, no, you've got it all wrong.

This is not a problem of ecology. This is a demonstration of worship. Scripture taken outside of its context, says somebody, is a pretext.

And it's always right to look at a narrative and have a quick look at what's before and what follows. And what you do in this particular incident, you find yourself in the heart of the chapter, the incident that we're specializing on for a little while, in an area of light, surrounded by two very dark patches indeed. Take the opening verses, and here you find Caiaphas and his cronies all together, and they are plotting for the death of the Lord Jesus.

They're concerned about Him, concerned about the impact that He's having upon ordinary people. The noise of Hosanna to the Son of David is still re-echoing in the streets of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem has shifted in its population of 50,000 to five times that number because it's Passover time, and the priests are scared about Jesus. They dare not arrest Him openly because, well, the Galileans, who they're in great numbers, they are potential supporters of the Lord.

And so slyly, as you find the verb in the fourth verse, subtly, Caiaphas and his colleagues conspire to arrest Jesus, to plot his downfall. Conspiracy. It's a nasty word, isn't it? But in my book, there's a word that's nastier than conspiracy.

It's the word treachery, and that's what you find the other side of the verses that straddle the ones that we're particularly looking at. Because if you drop down to the 14th, in the center stage come Judas Iscariot, and he is determined to hand Jesus over. So, he moves towards Caiaphas, and there's an unholy wedlock, so to speak, between the would-be betrayer and the confessed conspirators.

And one of the saddest questions falls from the lips of a close colleague of our Lord, Iscariot himself, as he says to Caiaphas, what are you willing to give me if I hand Him over to you? See what I mean? It's just as though in this chapter you find yourself in a darkened cathedral, and there's just one narrow window, and it's stained glass. And through that window shines the light of the sun, and it brings out in the colors of the stained glass all that you find in the sixth verse through to the thirteenth verse. But everything else is lost in the darkness and the somberness of conspiracy and treachery.

So, it's to those happier verses that I direct your attention, the sixth through to the thirteenth. And it reads in the sixth verse, as the narrator puts his pen across the page, while Jesus was in Bethany. Now, those of us who are familiar with Scripture are aware that Jesus had a great love for Bethany, and rightly so.

It was the last station of the pilgrim's road from Jericho to Jerusalem. In our terminology, just a hamlet. It nestled just at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

But it's not just the attractiveness of the place geographically. It's the people there that won Jesus' affection. There is Mary and Martha and Lazarus.

Here is, if you like, Jesus' hospitality house when He's engaged in His ministry in Jerusalem. It's only a couple of miles down the road, so often He makes tracks back to Bethany at the end of a hard day. But we're introduced to someone else who we don't read of elsewhere in Scripture, apart from the parallel accounts that give the same story as this one that Joyce read to us.

We're introduced to a man called Simon. We know very little about him, apart from his nickname. He was the leper, and he's throwing a party.

Just a little bit of logic indicates, therefore, that he must be freed of his leprosy or else he wouldn't be able to throw a party. He wouldn't be ceremonially clean, and it would be quite a risk for people to come along with a known leper. But I think you can make the conclusion that Simon is one of the people who have benefited by the healing ministry of our Lord Jesus.

And so here is Jesus back in comfortable Bethany with those that He loves. If you read the parallel references in the rest of Scripture, you'll find that the disciples are there in full compliment, and also this little family that was so gracious to our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope Jesus, and I don't say this sentimentally, I hope the Lord God feels at home with you.

I hope that when the Holy Spirit comes into your heart, you don't grieve Him. You should make God feel comfortable in your presence. He wants to be at ease.

It's amazing where you find body shops these days, isn't it? I mean, there I was in a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, wondering what to buy my wife on one of my trips from Asia. And there in all its glory, that which makes Little Hampton famous was a body shop. I'm not into perfumes.

The only time I bought perfume was here in Worthing when I went into Boots and one day shook a bottle. The top came off, with disastrous consequences for the next half hour when I was shopping. People sniffed at me.

I don't know if the proprietor of the body shop goes off to India. I guess she does because they do quite a lot of good work out there actually in that subcontinent. But she would have discovered in those days and perhaps even today that there is an oil, that there is a perfume known as nard.

That's how it is defined in John's Gospel. It's very precious. It's very, very priceless.

And we are told as you read this account and also the account in John's Gospel that the day when our Lord is having a hospitality at the hands of Simon, a woman comes in and she breaks open the long, narrow neck of this perfume, of this oil from India, and she pours it out on our Savior. I don't know what you think is a reasonable thing to give to our Lord Jesus. Sometimes don't misunderstand me.

I think we're very miserly in our giving. And giving does not necessarily mean, certainly not exclusively, finance. Giving can mean time.

Giving can mean breaking the sound barrier and bringing words to the Lord in terms of praise and worship. It's not always easy to express your emotion, is it? It's not always easy to show somebody that you really love how you do love them because words for many of us don't come very easily. And when they do come easily, they're not really adequate.

There are occasions when actions speak louder than words. John fills in quite a bit of detail if you check the parallel in the twelfth chapter of his Gospel. He tells us that at this feast called by Simon, Martha served.

Things don't change very much, do they? Men invite folk home and get the women to do the work. It's the same in our house too. I've been married to a Martha for twenty-five years.

John will indicate to you that it is none other than Mary who actually goes into the wardrobe and brings out what was probably a family heirloom, that is something precious, passed on from one generation to another generation. And in a moment of spontaneous love, she does something quite uncharacteristic. She comes into a room filled just with men whose eyes are wide open, whose brows pucker, and whose jaws will gape as they see her pouring this precious nard on the body of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Those who were in attendance described it as profligacy. Why this waste? Jesus described it as prophecy. She has anointed my body for the burial.

To them it was extravagance, to Him it is magnificence. They minimize it, He maximizes it. They say it will be done and over with in a moment.

He says that the action will live on eternally and never therefore be forgotten. Not a problem of ecology, a statement of worship, a statement as to how you and I ought to approach worship at least in principle in our own lives. Do you ever hear me recklessly show your love for the Lord Jesus? Is there something equivalent to a box or a vase of alabaster or an alabaster vase of nard or perfume that you could break upon His feet, that you could use to anoint His body? In my quieter reading earlier this morning, I came across a very telling passage in John's Gospel which referred to the secret disciples of our Lord Jesus.

It had never occurred to me before, but in the forty-third verse in the twelfth chapter, you read of those who were committed to the Lord Jesus in one sense and yet would not give a public demonstration of their loyalty. And it says, they loved praise from men more than praise from God. And I wonder sometimes, is our worship a little anemic because we are more concerned about what others think than we are about what God thinks? You see, these men, as they look upon this sensitive scene, they do so in a very clinical and in a very hurtful fashion.

Why this waste? The criticism of men sometimes causes us to cower as far as worship is concerned, for we are men-pleasers rather than God-pleasers. But it is our Lord Jesus who tips the scales the other way, and He says, why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. You call it waste.

I esteem it as having value. Malcolm Muggeridge was a man who impressed me a great deal, especially in his use of the English language. I have never met a man who had such an ability with language as Muggeridge did, not in the twentieth century anyway.

Our Lord outpaces anyone in His use of language. But on one occasion, Muggeridge is in Calcutta. I can see the place, for I have been there on some occasions myself, and he is mesmerized by those nuns who go out at night and minister to the wretched on the streets of Calcutta and various other cities in that vast subcontinent.

And when he starts to write an account of the life of the inspirer of that particular nun's order, he uses the skill of his eloquence as he dedicates his book under this title, Something Beautiful for God. She hath done what she could. Beautiful for God.

There were two ways in which you could engage in kindness in the intertestamental period. One was by almsgiving. The other was by other charitable acts of which a good example would be ministering to a dying person or embalming a corpse.

And when our Lord Jesus uses the language that congratulates this woman for her act, He is literally saying, why are you bothering this woman? She has done the good, the best that she could. She's hit the acme. She's on the summit.

She has climbed a pinnacle that Simon, you, whose body has been recovered from leprosy, that Lazarus, you who have been drawn back from the clutches of the dead, that you disciples, though you have been with me for nigh on three years, have never yet scaled to. She has done the good. And they said, it was a wasteful act.

How insensitive sometimes we are in our esteeming of what is of value and what is useless. What this woman does for our Lord Jesus is appropriate one to the condition in which He was in, and it was appropriate to the position He held. You say, well, what condition was our Lord in? Remember the argument of the disciples.

It runs on, they talk about this perfume. It could have been sold, not just sold at a high price, but here is, if you like philanthropy, it could be given to the poor. And our Lord comes in on this, and He talks about the poor having them always with them.

But me, I won't always be with you. Come back to that in a moment, but drop to Psalm 41, and you will see a wonderful truth brought by a modern commentator of this century, when he suggests that all that this woman engaged in is perhaps stimulated by the teaching of that Psalm, Blessed is he who has regard for the weak or for the poor. The Lord delivers him her in times of trouble.

The Lord will protect him her and preserve his life. You say, what's that got to do with Jesus? How do you esteem Jesus at this moment? Now, the problem is you're at the end of the secret. You're in at the end of the book.

You know about the Lord Jesus, but you didn't know, your knowledge was not as restricted as this woman's knowledge was restricted. Here is the Apostle Paul, and he speaks about the earthly life of our Lord Jesus. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor.

This Jesus is an outcast. He's a man despised by men. The foxes have holes, the birds have nests.

I've got nowhere. There's a loneliness about Jesus which is chilling, and causes tears to come into sensitive eyes as you think it through. Even the disciples, the ones who have been closest to Him, even they don't fully comprehend to the extent that they see this offering of worship, and they call it wastefulness.

It underlines the isolation of our Lord Jesus. Is there any poverty like unto His poverty? Is there any state that needs to be pitied more than His state? Blessed is she who has regard for the poor, for the weak. The Lord will protect her and preserve her life.

If she has some idea as to what is round the corner for our Lord Jesus, this poor man, and she ministers to Him anticipating His burial. Jesus will not die a pretty death. A death perhaps is never pretty, but there are some deaths that are more acceptable than a man being butchered on a cross, and a young man at that.

No time for any embalming by the Roman soldiers, it never even entered into their heads. No pause in the timetable made by Caiaphas, a pilot for someone to deal in a humanitarian way with the Lord Jesus. And this woman, throwing aside what might have been thought the shyness of a feminine disposition, comes and ministers to the poorest man at that point on the earth.

You see, Jesus' contrast later on is not between Himself and the poor, but the poor who you will have always with you, and me who you will not always have with you. Our Lord never backs off in terms of the concerns that we ought to have for the impoverished people. But if you will run with my argument at the moment and accept it, our Lord is poor at this stage.

And the woman sizes up His need, and she ministers to Him the condition in which He was, but then what about the position that He held? What is Jesus' title? You say, Jesus? No, that's not His title, that is His name. His title is Messiah or Meshiah, and it's the Hebrew for king. And any king or priest, for our Lord combines both the ministry of priest and king, should know what it is to be anointed.

We read in the Psalms of the anointing of Aaron, how the oil ran down from his hair to his beard, and then onto his shoulders, and then gradually off his garments onto his feet. And when you read the account of the anointing of Jesus here, you discover that one gospel says the woman anoints His feet, and another gospel says that the woman anoints His head. There's no contradiction at all.

It's a pint of nard, a large supply of perfume which will make its way down the body of our Lord Jesus. A king should be anointed, a priest should be recognized. And in the presence of the insensitive eyes of the disciples, in the company of Lazarus and Simon, a woman from the sex that paved the way to the fall, shows that she is becoming more sensitive to the way, paving the way for the rise and the redemption of mankind.

There's no waste, nor is there any haste in this woman's action. She saw what others didn't. She did what others wouldn't.

She selfishly gave what others selfishly keep. She ministered to a man in his poverty and anointed a king in the ignorance of the onlookers. What waste? Blessed are those, says the psalmist, who minister to the weak.

The Lord will protect him, her, and preserve him, her life. Our Lord Jesus makes a reference in terms of what will happen in the future in regard to this lady's action in the present. It will be retold.

When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of me. Do you know something that you need to have in your mind? Are you listening? At the beginning of 1991, the day will dawn following which there will be no other day.

It will be what the theologians will call the eschatological day. It will be the last day. It will be the day when there will be no further opportunity to work for the Lord as there is opportunity at this moment.

And the Apostle Paul is always talking about that day. Sometimes with horror as he thinks of the judgment of God that will fall on the human race at that moment. But there are other occasions when the writers of the gospels and the epistles speak of that day in an encouraging fashion.

Work for that day. Store up treasure in heaven for that day. For there is nothing that you do on earth in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ which will not be revealed in that day.

Listen to Bishop Ryle of Liverpool. The works of poets and painters shall not be mentioned. The speeches of parliamentary orators, the exploits of warriors will be forgotten.

But the least work that the weakest Christian woman has done for Christ or His members shall be found written in the book of remembrance. On that day, silver and gold you may have none. Influence never came within your grasp.

You never had any prowess as an athlete. You were never known beyond your own circle. But if you were a faithful mum, if you were a faithful dad, if you were a faithful Christian sister, if you were a faithful pathfinder leader or deacon or elder, if you faithfully cradled the child that you placed to your breast, if you did what you could and you did it as unto Him, then on that day what you have done will not be forgotten.

What waste is this? Fools that men are, they consider this to be wasteful, something that will last momentarily when Jesus says this will count throughout the whole of eternity. Eternity. Fools blinded by ignorance and prejudice.

Men always slow to believe what the prophets have taught. Men clinically making unfounded conclusions, having not had their eyes bathed in the eyesalve of the Spirit that enables them to distinguish between what is of importance and what is of peripheral interest. I tell you the truth, says our Lord Jesus.

And here is one of the gigantic leaps of faith that you find in the the personality of this man who has constantly now for the years of my life mesmerized me. This lonely man, this poor man, he straddles all that is going to happen in Jerusalem. He is not caught as in a pincer movement between the conspirators and the traitors.

He knows all these things are bound to happen within the purposes of God. But now he shoots beyond the bloodiness of the cross and the marvel of the empty tomb. And he squeezes in for comment that period of time between his ascension and his second advent.

And he says that during those centuries when this gospel is preached throughout the earth, when mention is made of my dynamic resurrection, there will be a passage given to the rehearsing of the activity of this woman. I don't know how many languages the Bible or the Gospels have now been translated into. It must be three hundred, probably far, far more.

But the fulfillment of the prophetic word of our Lord Jesus has continued down the centuries as men and women have staggered as they have come to consider what this woman did so many years ago when she offered valuable worship to our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, at this the beginning of 1991, let me enjoin you to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, using that extravagance from time to time to show that you appreciate who the Lord Jesus is, ministering to Him of your time and of your substance. I plead with you.

I never plead again from this pulpit. Count what you do for the Lord Jesus as more important than what you do for anyone else. Join with us this year in the ministry of intercession, for that day will come when you will be regretful of the fact that sometimes it was the television that stopped you from prayer meetings, or many other honorable things in their own right, but dishonorable when placed next to the primary thing of enhancing the kingdom of God.

Keep a balance. I'm not wanting to turn us into five hundred fanatics, but my concern is that the danger is at the other end of the pole. Sometimes we can come to the Lord on a Sunday morning, tip our cap, and off in our worship and sing our hymns and go away.

That's the waste. True worship is to take every minute and every day and fill it with a sense of doing what you're doing for Him, for His honor, for His glory. You see, and with this I close, there is an ecological problem in the kingdom of God.

It's the waste of time, talents, and resources. It's the consuming of history as it's taken the years. And to quote the metaphor of the Old Testament, it's just as though the locusts have eaten away that precious commodity that should have been invested in much more worthwhile pursuits.

I'll learn from the theology of this lady who brushed everything aside, who was prepared even to take the critical glances of insensitive men and pour her perfume on the body of Christ, and oblivious to everything else, unlocked her hair and let it flow down to shoulder level or waist level, and then wiped His feet with her hair. Such love for the Lord Jesus. To this, brothers and sisters, He calls you.

That's how that little song played, Such Love, and in a moment or two, we'll stand and sing it. It's 159, I think, in the white supplement. So