The Anointing at Bethany

Why were the people so upset when a woman anointed Jesus? After two days, it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That is, two days after the Olivet Discourse, these important moments in the Jewish calendar took place, and it is not without irony that at the same time that Jesus is entering into His passion, entering into His great suffering, that it coincides with the Passover, with the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. The most important feast of Old Testament Judaism was the celebration of the Passover because it commemorated God's deliverance of His people from the hand of the Egyptians and sparing the children of Israel from the angel of death or vengeance that was visited upon the Egyptians. You know the story how God instructed them to take the blood of the lamb and smear that blood on the doorposts so that any house that was marked by the blood of the land would escape the judgment that was being visited upon the Egyptians.

And God instructed them to celebrate this with an annual feast, and the terms of the consumption of food included the drinking of wine to remind them of the bitterness of their experience in bondage, and also of the slaying of a lamb that was to be sacrificed in the afternoon and then consumed as food in the evening. And they were also commanded to celebrate this event with a feast using unleavened bread. And the reason why the bread was unleavened was again because of the historic circumstances of the Passover that God commanded the people to be ready to move, not just out of their homes but out of the nation to follow His guidance in the Exodus. And at a moment's notice with haste they had to leave, and so they didn't have time to allow the yeast to rise in their bread.

So they used unleavened bread. Now when we sometimes read in the New Testament about the celebration of the Passover, we can get a little bit confused because the Passover was observed for an entire week. And so sometimes when it refers to the Passover, it refers to the whole week. When it refers to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, that took place in a long weekend, but not for the entire seven days. And then the specific celebration of the Passover meal took place, as I mentioned, in one afternoon and evening. So sometimes when the reference to the Passover, it refers to that one day, other times to the entire week. But again I say it is fitting that in terms of the history of redemption, the Lamb of God should enter into His suffering as He is about to be slain, that by His blood the judgment of God would pass over His people. And so Mark tells us that it was Passover.

It was the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes, now not the Pharisees or so on, but those who were the members of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews, sought how they might take Him by trickery and put Him to death. So they joined together to hatch a plot, a plan here, and they sought first of all to figure out how they could get a hold of Him, how they could take Him, how they could capture Him not simply for the purpose of incarcerating Him, but how they could capture Him in order that they could kill Him. That was their desire. That was their plan. And so they met together and figured out a game plan, that they set among themselves not during the feast lest there be an uproar of the people. Again, as much as they wanted to get rid of Jesus, they still feared a popular uprising and were going to limit some of their plans with an eye out to public opinion. Now all of a sudden the narrative changes.

It's interrupted. It begins with this message of the plot of the Sanhedrin to capture and execute Jesus. And what Mark does throughout his gospel is he uses what some would call a sandwich technique, where in the middle of a narrative he'll sandwich in something else that has direct relevance to the broader longer narrative. And I think we'll see the beauty of that sandwich here that he incorporates when he recounts for his readers what happened in Bethany with Mary. And so we're told in verse 3 that being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, obviously Simon was a healed leper because lepers were not allowed to engage in hosting dinner meals among the people. And so we can only assume that this Simon was one who had been healed of leprosy and probably and presumably healed by Jesus Himself. But in any case, he was in that home having a meal, and as he sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard.

Now the woman is not identified by name here, but in John's gospel, for example, the woman is identified as Mary the sister of Martha and the sister of Lazarus who lived in Bethany. But anyway, we're told that the woman remains unnamed in the text, that she came having an alabaster that is a bright white flask where the flask itself would be of some value, but this flask contained a very precious type of perfume, a very costly oil of spikenard. And as we will see in a few moments, the value of this perfume was over three hundred denarii. Now keep in mind that a denarius was typically one day's wage in Israel. The people worked six days.

They did not work or be paid on the seventh day. And when you have over three hundred denarii of value, you're talking basically here, dear friends, of a substance that cost a year's salary, a whole year's salary. Imagine somebody today taking all the money that they make in a single year and buying a vessel filled with costly perfume. Now the volume of this perfume was at least twelve ounces, maybe even sixteen, so that if you buy precious perfume, you know, ladies, on Mother's Day, that if you buy top of the line perfume, you buy maybe an ounce, and even then it could be very expensive. Not too many women go out and buy a pound of perfume at a time. Or think, if you will, of a twelve-ounce glass of something or a sixteen-ounce glass of something, and you'll get the idea of how much perfume was being carried in this alabaster jar. I'd also add at this point, something speculative, that the overwhelming majority of women who lived in that day did not make money like that in the marketplace. In all probability, this alabaster flask of precious perfume was owned by the family, perhaps even a family heirloom.

But I'm emphasizing here the enormous cost of this substance. And as they are seated in the dining experience with Simon the Leper in his house, Mary comes in and interrupts the meal, which was also in terms of Jewish protocol and etiquette a no-no. The only time a woman was allowed to interrupt a meal of men was if she were serving the meal, not just coming in and visiting or interrupting the conversation. But Mary doesn't hesitate. She comes in, and she doesn't just pour the ointment or the perfume out of this alabaster flask, but she breaks the flask and poured it, we are told, on his head. Now one of the discrepancies that people like to look at is that in John's version and others it says that when she was finished, she wiped Jesus' feet with her hair. And here, the focus of where Jesus is anointed is on His head.

Now which was it? On His feet or on His head? They're reclining at dinner, and it seems that one gospel writer tells us that he gets anointed on the head, the other one on the feet. Well when you consider the volume of the perfume that this woman breaks and pours on Jesus' head, it doesn't just dab His hair.

It covers His body head to toe. It's a minor bath of precious ointment or perfume that is taking place here. Now we are told that when she did this, there were some who were indignant. That is, they were, according to the Greek here, not just annoyed or irked, but their irritation had risen to the level of fury when they witnessed this episode. And they were indignant among themselves, and they said, why was this fragrant oil wasted? That was the protest that this use of precious perfume to anoint the Lord of glory who was entering into His passion was considered a waste.

It's unbelievable, isn't it? And if anybody had any idea who was being anointed and why they were being anointed and had any sense of value whatsoever, the only question they would raise is why was this woman's gift so small, let alone to be considered a waste. But you see in the eyes of the contemporaries of Jesus, this act of devotion by Mary was an act of extravagance. It's interesting to me again in the irony in this chapter where we see this interlocked with the value that Jesus had to Judas. And imagine in the same narrative we hear of the devotion of one who gives extravagant love to Jesus at a cost at a heavy price, and at the same time the record of unspeakable treachery and betrayal at a price of thirty pieces of silver. Here we read, it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor. Why do you waste this money on Jesus? Why do you waste this money on adoration when there are people who are hungry? Just think what we could have done with that three hundred denarii worth of perfume. We could have taken care of so many poor people.

What's wrong with your sense of value? That's what they're angry about, and the anger even goes further that says they criticized her sharply. That term sharply here in the English is a vast understatement. If you've ever seen movies or the real thing of the portrayal of a bullfight, and you see where the matador stands in the center of the arena with his cape and his sword, and he taunts the bull and says, Torro aqui, come on, bring it on, bull, and the bull paws the ground, and then you see the closeup of the bull where his nostrils flare in anger. That's the image that is used here, that these people were so angry at Mary for wasting this ointment that in their criticism their nostrils were flaring. I mean you have to be pretty mad to start flaring your nostrils.

But that's what Mark records for us. Hear now what Jesus the Lord said, but Jesus said, let her alone. Jesus said, that's right. Be quiet.

Calm your noses down. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. For the poor you have with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good, but Me you do not have always. Several years ago I was invited to preach in the inner city of Cleveland in the ghetto in a church where the minister there had been serving for twenty-five years, and the church building itself was surrounded with all of the signs of poverty, of drugs, of crime, of broken humanity. And we began to talk about the frustrations that were associated with his ministry, and he mentioned to me that he had had several young assistant ministers who had come to work in that church straight out of seminary. And he said the average length of their stay was two years because they gave up in their frustration. And I said, okay, they lasted two years.

You've been here twenty-five years. How do you account for that? He says, because of what Jesus said. I said, what's that? He said, Jesus said, the poor you always have with you. I said, wait a minute, that doesn't compute. I said, when I hear people quote that verse, the poor you always have with you, it's to justify ignoring the poor, having no concern for the poor, having no compassion for the ghetto. And I said, and yet that verse stimulates you to perseverance in this ministry and the ghetto?

I don't get it. He said, let me tell you the difference between my young assistants and me. My young assistants come out of seminary, stars in their eyes, filled with idealism. They're going to come in here like knights in shining armor and eradicate poverty.

And when they see that it doesn't happen in two years, they're burned out, and they leave. He said, I knew when I came here that the poor were always going to be here, and that my mission was not to eradicate poverty, but to minister to people who were in the midst of poverty. And so Jesus says to these people, I said, look, the poor are always going to be here, and you will have manifold opportunities to minister to the poor, and that's what I want you to do in my name. But right now, we're in a time of crisis. My presence is limited to a very short term, and she has done what she could. Jesus could have amplified that and said, she doesn't have the power to go over there with these people in the Sanhedrin and stop this plot to execute me. She doesn't have that kind of power or influence. She can't raise an army to defend me.

She's powerless. So all that she did was all that she could do. And she didn't come just to celebrate me and to adore me, but she came to anoint my body for burial. Now, I've been reading in the paper and all of that today in Mother's Day about all the wonderful things that mothers do for their children, and it's true what a debt all of us owe to our mothers. The older I get, the more I am moved by my understanding of the sacrifices that my mother made for me at great cost on several occasions to her and things that I really took for granted, particularly as a youth. And yet my mother would not have counted those things as sacrifices.

She wanted to do those things because she was a mother, and that's what mothers do, isn't it? But this woman anointed Jesus for His burial. We will see, God willing, later on that the importance of that burial to the whole history of redemption, to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, the fact that Jesus' body was not thrown into the garbage dump of Gehenna like executed criminals were, that the Father would not allow the Son's body to see corruption, that not a bone of His body would be broken. And the fact that Jesus was laid to rest in a rich man's tomb was of magnanimous importance in terms of Old Testament prophecy.

He made His grave with the rich because He had done no evil, Isaiah said. Remember on the Easter morning, what were the women doing? They were on their way to the tomb to complete the task of anointing the corpse of Jesus. But Mary comes with her most priceless possession and gives all of it to anoint Him before He dies.

Beloved, this is one of the most sacrificial, extravagant, heart-rending gifts of all time. And Jesus said, she has done a good work for Me. And He ends this discussion with these words, assuredly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will be told as a memorial to her.

I'm not going to let the world forget what you've just witnessed, what you've considered wasteful. I'm going to make sure that the whole world hears about this woman's act of love, devotion, and sacrifice. This was a great woman who did a great thing that we should applaud and emulate. A great woman who did a great thing. And she didn't seem to care what others thought of her actions.

She simply wanted to honor Jesus. You're listening to the Lord's Day edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. Thank you for being with us. We hope you're enjoying Dr. R.C. Sproul's sermon series from The Gospel of Mark.

As you've heard over the past several Sundays, R.C. helps us examine the text carefully and provides practical and powerful application. These messages became the basis for Dr. Sproul's commentary on The Gospel of Mark.

It offers sound teaching as well as helpful insight on what Jesus meant when He said, Follow Me. We'd like to send you the e-book version of this commentary for your gift of any amount. You can request it when you visit us online at renewingyourmind.org. As a reminder, our offices are closed today as we observe the Sabbath and worship with our families, so this offer is available online only. Once again, that web address is renewingyourmind.org. We also invite you to check out RefNet. That's our 24-hour internet radio station. RefNet offers solid Reformed teaching from Dr. Sproul along with our Ligonier Ministries teaching fellows and other trusted pastors and teachers. You can listen for free at any time at refnet.fm. We're grateful that you joined us today, and we hope you'll make plans to be with us again next Sunday as we continue Dr. Sproul's verse-by-verse sermon series from The Gospel of Mark. This is Renewing Your Mind, the listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries.