In Memory of Her

So just a reminder that we practice members' communion here. It's not meant to exclude people or create a different class of Christian or anything like that. We have an explanation of why on our website, and so we invite you to check that out. Or just talk to us about communion and talk to us about membership. But we think communion is very important here.

One of the reasons we're here is we think we should meet weekly and have communion. and if you're not meeting weekly, you're not doing church. So if you're doing online church, you're not doing church. It's that simple. And anybody that's doing it and wants to argue with me, you're free to call me and we can argue about it. If we open the Bible, you won't find online church.

You just won't. You won't find online anything. But in particular, you gather together to have your time of worship. And one of the things that the early church did, and that the church we believe in, the scripture that was described it, is they had weekly communion. And unless you're providentially hindered from worshiping with your local church, you ought to be there, you ought to be on time, cheerful, all the things that should come with it, and you ought to have your communion time.

I also want you to come even if you're not cheerful. I want you to get boosted up by other Christians on those days that happen to all of us too. But Lord willing, we would all be happy to worship Christ, even on our hard days. In Mark 14, is that what I said? Just making sure. It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him. So we're talking about Jesus here. for they said not during the feast lest there be an uproar from the people they were afraid of man right and while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper as he was reclining at table a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard very costly and she broke the flask and poured it over his head there were some who said to themselves indignantly why was the ointment wasted like that for this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor so here you have the birth of the social justice movement right And they scolded her They scolded her for worshipping Jesus Christ and giving what was of the most value to Him. But Jesus said, leave her alone.

Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. He says, for you always have the poor with you and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.

So of course, as yet, they did not understand that Jesus was going to die, right? Even though he told them. They were dull of understanding. But he says, and truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told. in memory of her. And so this is what I want you to meditate on today. Sometimes after a sermon where I feel like I maybe hit you hard with some of God's law, I want to encourage you.

I want you to remember that this woman, she's unnamed. She wasn't popular with the religious leaders of the day and she wasn't even popular with the followers of Jesus. but this woman's dedication to Jesus Christ her worship of Jesus Christ was important to him and here we are thousands of years later and we're reading about it Jesus said wherever the gospel is proclaimed what she has done will be told in memory of her and here we are we're telling it in memory of her and so what I want you to remember is that while you're laboring for the Lord while you're at home maybe you're the wife dealing with the difficult husband Maybe you're the husband dealing with a difficult wife. Maybe you've got a difficult child or four.

I want you to remember, while you're laboring for the Lord, while you're in your prayer closet, and nobody sees you, and nobody's talking about you on Facebook, about what a holy person you are, and what a great prayer you are, and nobody's knowing all the good things that you do, sometimes in secret. I want you to know God sees. And He's the one who will reward you.

And He will not forget your labor of love. And He didn't forget this woman's labor of love. And I want you to remember that. When you feel insignificant, when you feel like a failure, that Jesus Christ if He died for you it wasn in vain He loves you He going to bring you home and He sees everything that you do for Him And even if by His providence you don end up with some kind of big impactful ministry like a guy like John MacArthur or Charles Spurgeon or some of these people we really, really like and look up to, God sees every little thing that you do.

Every prayer that you give as a prayer of faith for your friend or for the person you love or even a confession of your own sin, He sees it all and He loves it. I want you to be encouraged by that and then if you look at verse 10 we have the contrast then Judas Iscariot who was one of the twelve went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them so just as we remember this woman's labor of love, we don't even know her name this special woman that anointed Christ for his burial we also know the name of the betrayer so God's going to remember those who are his he's never going to forget them and betrayers may in fact be remembered by name so be comforted in your be comforted in your significance to our Lord Jesus he didn't come to die for you to leave you stuck wherever you might get stuck once in a while he just wants you to keep crying out to him for more and more help to stop being self-reliant no matter how much you've grown in Christ you have one need today and that's Jesus Christ he's your biggest need, he's your only need and no matter how well you think you're doing it's all him it's still all him so rest in that so later on the night he was betrayed Jesus Christ took bread and he gave thanks for it and he broke the bread and he gave it to his disciples and he said this is my body which is given for you he says do this in memory of me and so we break the bread we believe in the regulative principle of worship so we break the bread because Jesus broke the bread and I'll give thanks for the bread as well and it's a reminder that his body is what was broken for us. And it talks about it in the Confession that we don't believe this bread actually becomes Jesus' body in a Roman Catholic way in transubstantiation.

But we can also rightfully say this is the body of Christ that you're going to partake in. And we need to understand what those things mean Jesus took the cup and he gave thanks to God for it What a prayerful man You know Always communicating with his Father through prayer. And he poured the cup and he said, this is the cup of my blood which will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven.

He said it's a new covenant. Not an old covenant. not an old covenant made a little bit different a new covenant in my blood a better covenant one that can actually save sinners and Jesus Christ provides the blood that was necessary for the forgiveness of sins for humans because he was a human but he was also God, divine man so let me pray for the elements and then I'll have you come up and get your elements. And then what we'll do is we'll sing Psalm 51 together.

And whether you're partaking or not, I want you to think about what this ceremony means, what this memorial service means. And you should take it to heart why we're doing it. And you should be in your own heart confessing and praying. Lord, thank you for the bread and the cup. Thank you for Jesus who came to die on our behalf. I pray, Lord, that the people in this room who do not yet know Jesus Christ as Savior will come to know Him tonight.

That you will save the souls of everyone in this room and even our extended families and people who aren't with us tonight. We thank you that in our own little way here in Pickerington, Ohio in 2020, we are able to worship you in spirit and truth just like that woman. and with even more revelation we can love you we can know you even better than people were able to thousands of years ago before your resurrection I thank you for providing the means that we have to do our worship I pray that you would give us a good spirit about us as we partake of the elements and as we think in our hearts about what it means that you died for our sins and suffered the wrath of the Father. Thank you for sending Jesus to die on our behalf, Father.

And thank you, Jesus, for being willing. I invite you to come up and get your elements now.