There's been a fascinating group of people that
gathered near the close of our Lord's ministry
here on earth, in the village of Bethany,
for a little celebration supper.
I suspect that the main purpose of that
supper was to celebrate the resurrection of Lazarus
from the dead, and the Bible gives us
the story of what happened at that feast
or supper.
And first of all, I'd like to remind
you who was present.
The disciples were all there, and they tell
us that it was in the house of
Simon the leper.
There was a story.
There must have been quite a story.
Simon the leper?
Does this mean that his leprosy had been
healed miraculously, perhaps by the Lord Jesus?
Quite likely so.
And he had a story to tell, let
me tell you, of his past desolate life,
and now the exciting experience of being healed
and restored now to fellowship with his family
and contact with his friends.
And then, Lazarus, what a story he had
to tell of his experience in the grave.
What is it like to die, taste death,
to go through the experience of the departure
of soul from body, to be laid in
the grave, and then to be raised from
it all?
Man, I'd like to have heard that testimony,
and would like to have been there to
have asked Lazarus some questions, too.
But perhaps the most important guest who was
present that night was the Lord Jesus Christ,
this stranger from Galilee who had stirred up
all the city of Jerusalem, and who was
even now entering into the shadows, those long
dark shadows of the cross, and what was
going to take place in the very near
future.
Even while they were meeting and enjoying their
fellowship, we're told that the chief priests and
the scribes were seeking how they might take
him by craft and put him to death.
But they decided to postpone it because of
the feast day, lest there be an uproar
of the people.
And while they were seated or reclining about
that table, an incident occurred with which I
know you're familiar, which brings into sharp relief
again another biblical character.
A woman burst through and into the room,
and she took a box of ointment that
she had and broke it and poured the
ointment on the person of our Savior.
Let's let Mark tell the story.
He was present.
He ought to know what actually took place
better than anybody else, and here's what he
said in the fourteenth chapter of this gospel.
At the third verse we read it, and
being in Bethany in the house of Simon
the leper, as he sat at meat there
came a woman having an alabaster box of
ointments of spikenard, very precious, and she broke
the box and poured it on his head.
And there were some that had indignation within
themselves and said, why was this waste of
the ointment made when it might have been
sold for more than three hundred pence and
had been given to the poor?
And they murmured against her, and Jesus said,
let her alone.
Why trouble ye her?
She has wrought a good work on me,
for you have the poor with you always,
and whensoever you will you may do them
good, but me you have not always.
She hath done what she could.
She has come beforehand to anoint my body
to the burying.
Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel
shall be preached throughout the whole world, this
also that she hath done shall be spoken
of for a memorial of her."
As I read that story, and then put
beside it a little postscript that comes to
us from another of the Gospels, I see
three things to which I direct your attention
tonight.
First of all, I want you to notice
the reaction of the disciples to the action
of this woman.
How did they react?
And then I'd like you to consider with
me the remarks of the Savior, what Jesus
said in the light of all that this
woman did, and also in the light of
what they said.
And, in the third instance, when we add
the postscript that comes to us from another
of the Gospels, I want you to think
to me about the release of the fragrance
of that woman's deed in breaking the box
of ointment on the person of our Savior.
There are some parts of this that are
puzzling to me.
I'm puzzled by the reaction of those disciples.
I find it very hard to read verse
4, for instance, in the Gospel of Mark.
There were some that had indignation within themselves.
Now, that's a strong word.
I don't know how you read that.
But, in the public reading of the Word
of God, you simply can't read that word
without putting into it some pressure, some emphasis.
It's a strong word.
You can't just say there were some that
had indignation among them and slur it over.
No way.
And do it justice.
You have to get the feeling of this
thing.
They were indignant, these disciples.
They were stirred up.
Some may have been angry in their reaction.
They had indignation within themselves, and they said,
Why was this waste of the ointment made?
Now, I'll tell you why I have trouble
with that verse, because what this lady did,
what this woman did, was done for and
on the Savior.
The Lord Jesus Christ, and how men who
knew him could react so violently as this
with indignation, and even use the word waste
in connection with this deed, is a puzzler
to me.
Now, I think I know where they got
their idea.
Somebody came up with the idea that this
was a waste, because what this woman gave
to Christ, what she did for him, was
a very costly thing, and it could have
been sold for, it indicates, 300 pence.
A lot of money was a lot of
money then, and then they facetiously covered it
up by saying, and the money could have
been given to the poor.
Now, I don't know how you react to
this, but let me tell you how I
do.
I say, Bosh!
That sheer stupid nonsense.
They had no concern for the poor.
See, that was not the real reason why
they felt as they did.
This is a facetious reason, illogical to say
the least.
But, nonetheless, there were those who interpreted this
activity, this action, as waste.
Now, where do they get this idea from?
Well, we don't have to wonder too long,
for there's a parallel account of all of
this in the twelfth chapter of John's Gospel,
and you'll discover that this idea arose with
Judas Iscariot.
He's the one who suggested that what this
woman did was a wasteful deed, and that
it could have, this ointment could have been
sold in the money given to the poor.
He's the one who called it waste.
Now, I want to draw a quick line
of application here for just a moment.
Whenever there is an action, an act of
utter devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ, commitment
that's total, there's an abandonment of life, of
all its purposes and plans to Him, it
is bound to rouse people to sometimes drastic
opinions.
I see this in missionary conferences.
All around this land, I have the great
joy and privilege of participating in missionary conferences,
and I tell you, I watch the reactions
of people in some of these conferences.
Here comes a young couple, say, let me
create a scenario.
If they're sort of a decrepit-looking couple,
he hasn't made much of a mark anywhere,
and she's a little bit on the homely
side, and so on, they might say, well,
what else could they do but go to
the mission field?
We give our old worn-out garments to
the missionaries, let's give our old worn-out
people to them too.
They can't, they couldn't do anything very important
anyhow.
But, let's suppose that this fellow is a
graduate from university with a five-bedder capacity
glistening here on his vest.
He's brilliant, he's made his mark, and he
has potentiality beyond belief.
It can be, he can make his mark
in the world, and furthermore he's tall, and
he's dark, and he's handsome.
He's not rich, I'm sorry to say, and
had much money, but there he is a
handsome specimen, and he's married to a lovely
lady.
She was Miss Campus in her day, chosen
the queen of the campus.
See, I'm picking out the best I know.
Beautiful, just beautiful, and as they stand on
that platform, and they present themselves for missionary
service, where are they going?
Oh, they go to some remote area of
New Guinea, maybe down to Borneo, or perhaps
they even have volunteered to go to mainland
China, or they're going down to South America
to some jungle area.
She's a beautiful girl, and folks are looking
at them, and they're talking about how much
they love the Savior, and they are willing
to go anywhere he wishes them to go,
and they want their lives to be spit
out for Jesus Christ.
There's going to be some bitty in the
crowd, some fussy old woman who's going to
be saying something like this, what a shame,
and listen, to make it worse, if they
have a baby, a little baby in arms,
you, you can imagine what you're going to
take that little sweet little thing out to
the jungles where there's no doctors, and no
hospitals.
You're going to take them out to that
remote area, and risk the very life of
your precious little child?
Now, the world thinks that's stupidity to do
that thing.
That's the dumbest thing any couple can do.
And, they call this devotion, this commitment to
the Savior, wait, and I can understand their
point of view, and I don't get much
ruffled by what they say.
What do we care what the world thinks
about us, anyhow?
They don't know any better.
They're blind, and they're dumb as far as
spiritual things are concerned.
They don't understand eternal values at all.
So, don't be impressed, or upset, or troubled
by what the world thinks about our devotion,
and our total commitment to Jesus Christ.
It wants religion, but it doesn't want too
much of it.
It doesn't mind that we are religious, but
it's what disturbs us.
The the worldlings of our day is totality
of commitment.
That they can't stomach, that they can't accept,
but that is not the disturbing element to
me in this story.
I can understand Judas's point of view.
What I cannot understand is that he influenced
those disciples, so that that became their point
of view, and they were the ones who
said so plainly.
There were some that had indignation within themselves,
and said, why was this waste of the
ointment made?
When the saints react like the world reacts,
we're in deep trouble.
Some Christians can't understand it.
Some believers can't accept total commitment to Christ
today, and total devotion.
They don't mind if the woman should take
some of the ointment out of the box,
maybe most of it, but when she scraped
it clean, and there was nothing left, not
one smidgen, all of every single bit of
it is devoted to the Savior.
This became a disturbing thing to those disciples,
and in effect really measured their own devotion
to the Lord Jesus Himself.
So, the reaction here was violence, and it
is difficult to accept it, and by today's
standards, and in these days in which we
live, we face sometimes the same reaction on
the part of disciples when they come up
against some examples of this kind of devotion
to Christ.
Now, let's notice what the Savior has to
say to all of this.
The remarks of the Savior.
The first thing he says, rather sternly, is,
let her alone.
Why trouble you her?
Let me point out to you, he says,
that the first thing that you must notice
is that she has wrought a good work
on me.
Is anything we ever do for Jesus Christ
a waste, or is it a good, does
he consider it a good work when it's
done for him?
He says that what she did was a
work done for him, and then he explains
a little bit of her deed, because they
didn't get it.
Now, he says, first of all, let me
talk about the poor, that issue that you've
raised.
You have them with you all the time,
you'll always have the poor, and whensoever you
will, whenever you decide to do something for
the poor, you'll find there's opportunity to do
so.
You may do them good, but don't forget
you don't always have me.
I'm here for just a short time, and
you know that's true of your life and
mine.
I would, I dare say that some of
us, as we sit here tonight, could look
back over the path of life and say,
I wish 20 years ago, 30 years ago,
I had done more for Jesus Christ.
I was always thinking about a future day.
Maybe I was waiting till I could retire.
Listen, I live down in Boca Raton, and
there's a lot of retirees down there, and
they come down to play golf and count
the coconuts, and that's all, and the only
other subject that eats them up is where's
the cheapest eating place, the latest restaurant.
You can sit, if you've got long ears,
you can hear them talking.
It's food, food, food, food, food, and they're
stuffing themselves, and there are a lot of
able-bodied men down in that part of
the country who are doing very little with
their lives for Christ.
They may have been people who thought about
some future day when they were going to
do something for the Lord Jesus, and when
they were free of business responsibilities, they would
then get busy for the Lord.
I heard about him, an old fellow at
my stage of the game.
70 seems old, folks, but this guy was
70 years old, and he had been retired
for a few years, and he got tired
of retirement.
He just, he didn't have anything to fill
up his time, and he was a believer,
and he got worried about it.
So, one day he told the Lord, he
said, Lord, I want to go to work
for you.
I can work for you for nothing.
Nobody has to support me.
I got enough coming in, a little bit
of saving, and Uncle Sam's paying most of
my salary with social security, so I don't
have to worry too much, and I'm going
to go to work for you.
So, he put on a nice suit of
clothes, and he filled his pocket with tracts,
gospel tracts, and then he started on the
street where he lived, and he knocked on
the first door, and a lady, a lady
came.
He looked at her, and she couldn't turn
him aside.
He was a nice-looking old man, well
-dressed, didn't look like he was a mugger
or a robber, and so she was open
to him, and he said, excuse me, madam,
I'll not take much of your time, just
a moment.
I am inquiring about this.
Does Jesus Christ live in this house?
That woman looked at him as though he
had slapped her in the face.
She backed up three or four steps, and
she said, would you repeat that?
He said, I just want to know, does
Jesus Christ live in this house?
And she fumbled, and she stumbled, and he
recognized the fact, of course, that he didn't.
So, he said, would you kindly read this
little piece of paper of when I'm gone?
And he handed her a tract and said,
thank you very much, and he left.
Then he went to the next house.
Again, a lady came.
Madam, I'll not take much of your time.
I'm just going through the neighborhood asking a
simple question.
I'm looking for Jesus Christ.
Does he live in your house?
And that woman really got disturbed, and that
fellow, do you know what he's done?
The last I heard, he had contacted 50
,000 homes with that simple question.
He wasn't concerned about arguing with him about
anything.
He had a pocket full of gospel tracts,
and he was doing what he could for
the Lord, just asking.
Now and again, he'd meet somebody who would
say, why, yes, he does, and he'd say,
isn't that a wonderful brother, sister?
I'm so glad.
Thank you for telling me that.
Will you just remember me in prayer while
I go and ask a few more people
in the neighborhood about whether Jesus lives in
their house, and he would go his way.
He's not tired of retirement anymore.
Boy, he's so busy, he can't keep up
with it.
His life is counting.
One might think that that's not much, but
it is something that's counting, and he's going
to make the days that God has given
to him count for God's glory the best
he can.
He knows what he can do, he knows
what he can't do, so he's doing what
he can do, and he's doing it as
unto the Lord.
This woman has done, she's performed a good
work on me, and furthermore, he says, she
has done what she could.
Do you know that's all the Lord asks
of us?
To do what you can.
Are you doing what you can for Christ?
Are you really?
Listen, don't, don't, please don't be overcome by
the philosophy that it's all over for you.
If you can walk, you know, when I
get out of bed in the morning, I
put one leg out first, and I say,
thank God that one works.
Now, I hope the other one does, too.
So, I pull that one out, and I
say, gee, that's two of them.
Then, I stand up, say, hey, I can
get up.
I know some dear, dear people who would
give a fortune, half a fortune to be
able to do that, but I stand up,
and now I'm alive.
I'm awake, and I move a few other
parts of me, and I decide that I'm
not in bad shape.
I guess I can do something for God
today.
It's wonderful to be able to do that.
Alive in Christ, too.
On top of all of this, I'm alive
in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, what can I do, Lord Jesus, to
make this day count for thee?
Yesterday is history.
I can do nothing to change it, and
I don't know whether I'll ever have it
tomorrow, but I have now.
What I do for you, I must do
now.
And, you mustn't succumb to the philosophy that
it's all over, and God cannot use you
anymore.
I don't know what he may have for
you.
Only he and you can transact that piece
of business.
He knows where you can fit in in
a special way in his plan and purpose,
but the main thing is, are you dead
sure tonight that you're doing something for him?
That's it.
So that these days are not wasted days,
but count their days that are counting for
him.
She has done what she could.
She has come beforehand to anoint my body
to the burial.
Now, the important word there is the word
of forehand.
It directs our thoughts to timing.
Timing.
Time is important.
It's vital.
What are we doing now for the Lord
Jesus Christ?
See, that's the important and vital question.
Are you doing something for him?
Now, I don't know what it is.
I probably could suggest a few things.
Why should I?
I might interfere with what the Holy Spirit
is saying to you that you can do
for him something that really counts.
I was telling some of the friends the
other night when we had some fellowship together
about a man I heard about many years
ago that inspired me very much.
I'd never met this man, but he did
inspire me when I thought of him.
He, his name was Casey Van Der Jack.
Any of you who have Dutch background will
recognize that's a good old Dutch name, and
he comes or he came out of Grand
Rapids.
A lot of Dutch people out in Grand
Rapids, and he was a truck driver, an
ignorant, rough, tough truck driver.
His language was awful, but it got saved,
wonderfully saved, and the Lord cleaned him up,
cleaned up his tongue, made him a new
creature in Christ Jesus, but he couldn't read
or write, but he had a burning desire
to serve the Lord, to do something for
Jesus in gratitude for what the Savior had
done for him.
So, he went down to Mel Trotter's mission,
and he said to Mel Trotter, can I
do something for Jesus?
What's poor old Mel going to say to
this guy?
He can't read, he can't write, he's ignorant,
but he's a big burly truck driver.
So, Mel finally said, how would you like
to give out tracts?
Well, yeah, he'd do that, whatever it was.
And so, Mel Trotter had to take some
tracts, and because this dear brother couldn't read,
he divided them between the saved tracts that
are written with Christians in view, and tracts
that were written for the unsaved in view,
and he said to old Casey, he said,
now take these tracts that are written for
Christians, and put them in your left pocket.
See, that's the left pocket, that one there,
and then you take the tracts that are
written for the unconverted, and put them in
your right pocket, that's this other pocket here,
see?
Put them there, and then you stand outside
of our mission here, and when people come
by, you ask them if they're a Christian,
just that's all, just ask, are you a
Christian?
If they say yes, invite them into the
mission, and give them one of these tracts
for Christians.
If they say no, then say, well, would
you please take one of these pieces of
paper?
They're written for the non-Christians.
Oh, I thought that was great.
So, night after night, for years, Casey VanderJack
used to come down for the mission.
Even when it rained, he'd find him out
there, giving out his tracts, and he got
to be sort of known by visitors who
came to Grand Rapids, and there was a
smart alley salesman for the Fleishman Yeast Company
from Boston, and he heard about Casey VanderJack,
so he came on a visit out there
to Grand Rapids, and he got a handful
of little folders, same size as gospel tracts,
that advertised the old-fashioned yeast cakes.
You remember them?
Little gold label on them, wrapped in silver
paper, and this was, and these were advertisements.
So, he went to Casey, and he handed
him these, and he said, Casey, here's some
brand new tracts for the unconverted.
Stick them in your pocket for the unconverted,
and give them out to people who aren't
saved.
Casey looked at him and said, gee, they're
pretty, ain't they?
There's the gold there, and there's the red,
and there's the white, and he already was
starting to interpret that piece of paper, so
he could talk to the people, put them
in his pocket.
The salesman went inside the mission, sat down
for the service, and it was a very
uncomfortable service for him.
The Holy Spirit began to deal with him,
and finally he said to himself, I am
a wretch.
I am a dirty wretch.
Look, here's this good old man out there
doing his best for God, and I do
nothing, and I pulled this dirty trick on
him.
I got to get up and go out
and apologize, and get those leaflets back again.
He said when he steps outside, and he
looks up both sides of the street, he
couldn't see anybody, and then he his eye
caught Casey over here in the doorway, and
he had a drunk there.
The drunk couldn't even stand up.
He was sitting down, and Case had his
big old paw right against his chest, so
he couldn't move, couldn't get away, and in
the other hand, he had a Fleischman's yeast
advertisement, and he was saying, look brother, your
heart's black as hell, but the blood, see
that red?
That's for the blood of Jesus.
That red will clean your heart up, and
make it white.
See the white there?
That white, that's for the, how white the
blood of Jesus can make your heart, and
one day you can walk the streets of
gold in heaven.
That's what the gold's for, and here poor
old Casey would find a lead of soul
to Christ from a Fleischman's yeast advertisement, and
the guy was half drunk.
Do you think the Lord overlooked that?
I don't.
I think that was pleasing to the heart
of God.
He was doing what he could when he
could for the Lord Jesus.
There's a little touch here.
Maybe I'm wrong in my interpretation of the
scriptures at this point, but I'll give it
to you nonetheless.
That ninth verse, it says, Verily I say
unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached
throughout the whole world, this also that she
hath done shall be spoken of for a
memorial of her.
Our normal interpretation of that verse says this,
that whenever we refer to this incident, this
happening, the story of this woman's devotion to
Jesus, her breaking of her alabaster box of
ointments, so precious, and pouring its contents wholly
and totally upon the person of Jesus, that
story will be told in company with the
gospel story, and it will be a memorial
to her.
That's our normal interpretation of this verse, and
I think that's all true, but I think
there is something else here, something in addition
to that.
Did you notice that the Lord does not
say, wheresoever the gospel is preached?
He didn't use the definite article the.
He said this gospel.
Now, I don't think I'm straining at a
gnat for fear I shall swallow a camel
in the process.
I don't think so at all.
What does he mean by that?
I think he means something like this, wherever
the very heart of the gospel is exposed
to men, and what should the gospel lead
to?
What should it lead to?
It should lead to what Paul writes to
the Corinthians when he says, Christ died for
all that they which live should henceforth not
live unto themselves, but unto him who died
for them.
The gospel calls for this kind of devotion,
and if it doesn't call for this, it
is an incomplete presentation of the gospel.
The announcement of the good news is not
merely for the forgiveness of our sins, it
is that too, yes, but it is in
addition to that.
It calls for those who are forgiven of
their sins, and justified.
It calls for them to devote themselves with
utter devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The book of Acts is the chronicle of
what happened in the early church, in the
days of the early church, when those disciples
were totally committed to Jesus Christ, and were
willing even to lay down their lives for
his sake, and they shook the world of
their day.
Men took knowledge of them, not that they
had been in the great universities of the
day, but that they had been with Jesus,
and knew him.
And what was it that shook the world
of their day?
Their total devotion to Jesus Christ.
And our savior, I think, is saying, wheresoever
this gospel, this kind of gospel, is announced
in the world, it will produce the same
kind of devotion to me as is exhibited
in this woman's deed of utter surrender of
all that's precious to her, to me.
True, it will include the story of what
she does and did as a memorial to
her.
And then he reminded them that she understood
some things that maybe some of them didn't
quite yet grasp, and that was she had
anointed him to the moment of his burying.
Maybe this woman had already comprehended Calvary.
Maybe she already even had gone the step
beyond the cross to the thought of the
resurrection, and now she is anointing his body
in preparation for that great event.
It's a great deed.
Now, will you turn to John 12 in
conclusion tonight?
John chapter 12.
This is the postscript to this story.
John tells it thus, six days before the
Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was,
which had been dead.
He raised from the dead, and there they
made him a supper.
Martha served.
Lazarus was one of them that sat at
the table with him.
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of
spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of
Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair.
And look at this comment, and the house
was filled with the odor of the ointment.
Her action released the fragrance of that ointment.
The breaking led to the releasing of the
fragrance, and that's what it takes.
It takes the breaking, the surrender of what
we have in order to release the fragrance
that is wrapped up in a redeemed life.
We can leave all kinds of impressions for
God.
We can leave the impression that we're gifted,
we're talented, or sweet, or great, or anything
else, but we're not really here to preach.
We're here to make people hungry for God,
thirsty for him, and when a life is
devoted totally and wholly unto him, there is
a relief of precious fragrance.
It fills the whole church, fills the house
of God, makes the saints glad, brings joy
and gladness to the Savior.
We were down in South Africa some years
ago.
We're flying back into the hinterlands, and our
pilot, who was a Christian pilot of course,
he said we're going to have lunch way
back there in the bush with a very
unique couple.
He's British, she's a Texan.
She comes from Texas, and he said we'll
have to buzz the field, and that was
an interesting field.
Field was just a strip, a little gash
in the jungle.
He said we buzz that first to be
sure there are no goats or any other
animals on the strip so we can land.
So, he said I'll go around a couple
of times, and he said the first time
around maybe they, that'll be the alert, and
he said eventually if you look down you
will see he is sitting in a wheelchair,
and she'll be standing there beside him, and
then he did his best to tell us
a little bit of the story.
He had the piece what we got from
him in the few moments we had before
we landed, and what we learned later.
This man's name is Mike Warburton, and Mike
Warburton was an engineer for the British railways
in South Africa, and he wasn't converted, but
he saw in the lives of missionaries such
devotion to Jesus Christ that he couldn't explain.
He never run across people like them, and
so being deeply impressed he sought the Lord,
and the Lord was found of him, and
he got saved, and he decided to quit
his engineering career and become a missionary.
So, he applied to a missionary agency, and
they appointed him as a missionary, and he
went out to the field.
Now, Mike was a huge man, physically endowed,
great muscles, and a man who could do
almost anything, and a hard, hard worker.
He drove himself merciless.
Well, they were back there in the bush.
They'd established a fine station there, and he
was trying to build a dam to assure
a water supply for the station compound, and
on this very hot afternoon he labored just
a bit longer than usual, and then he
had developed a headache, a terrible headache.
This one he recognized immediately was a little
different than anything he'd ever had before.
He went back to the house and told
his wife, who happened to be a nurse,
that he had a bad headache.
She gave him the usual medications that they
had out there.
Now, mark you, they were nearly 500 miles
away from any medical care.
They were back in the deep bush, and
as the afternoon wore on, his headache became
worse.
He took his temperature, and it rose and
rose and rose until it was up around
the 102, 103 mark, and dangerously rising.
She was almost frantic, what to do, what
to do, and that evening, while he was
in delirium, that evening God did some a
wonderful thing.
Two excellent medical doctors, missionary doctors, were driving
from one point in South Africa to another,
and they came within 40 miles of Mike's
station.
One of those doctors, a man whom I
know very well, this man said to his
doctor friend, you know, I have a feeling
we ought to call on Mike.
Just drop into the station.
His friend said, but look at the hour.
It was late in the evening, maybe close
to 11 or 12 o'clock, and beside,
I would rather drive all night to get
through.
I have such a load of work tomorrow.
No, let's go.
So, they drove another 40 miles, but the
impression was so deep upon this first doctor
that he said, no, we've got to turn
around and go back, which they did, and
by the time they got back, this woman,
Fran, was at the point of utter desperation.
She threw herself upon the Lord.
God, what shall I do?
When there came a knock on their door,
she opened the door, and two excellent medical
doctors stood there.
Talk about a miracle.
Isn't that thrilling?
They examined him, and they said, Fran, we've
got trouble, deep trouble.
He is desperately ill, and we've got to
get him to a hospital, but she said,
there's no way.
We've got to wait till morning when we
can use the radio and ask for a
plane to come, which they eventually did, and
so they got him to a hospital.
They said, he's developed meningitis, and he's already
paralyzed from the hip down.
Well, the story I can shorten by telling
you that he became utterly paralyzed, and he
went back to England.
They're examining there the best medical authorities.
They said, this man will never walk again.
He insisted on being brought to America and
taken to the Mayo Clinic.
Maybe they would have some new approach to
his problem and could help.
They had the same verdict, and so here
he was, now totally paralyzed, couldn't walk at
all.
And this big giant of a man became
as helpless as a baby.
He insisted that they send him back to
Africa.
The board wrestled with it, fought with it,
and finally, most reluctantly, agreed to let him
go back to South Africa as a missionary.
But, the thing that turned the whole thing
around and influenced them on their decision, in
their decision, was a letter which I read
from a little black man out there in
South Africa.
Just a little man, very short, slight.
I doubt if he weighed more than 130
to 140 pounds.
Skinny as a rail.
And this letter was written to Mike Warburton,
and it said something like this, Dear Guana,
we hear that you are sick in your
legs, and you can't walk, but we need
you.
We love you.
Will you come back?
And if you come back, Guana, I promise
you, till the day I die, I will
be your legs.
I'll take you wherever you want to go.
I'll carry you.
A man that's paralyzed is a dead weight.
I don't know what Mike weighed at that
time, well over 225 pounds.
How could this little man do that?
But, we stood in, I stood in Africa,
and I saw this little black man reach
in a van, and lift that big heavy
man out, put him in his wheelchair, take
him where he was going, lift him again,
and put him back.
And, you know, for a dozen years, that
little black man became Mike Warburton's legs.
And you want to know something?
The fragrance.
I still smell it.
Way over here, I smell the fragrance of
a box of ointment that was broken, and
every ounce of it, every bit of it,
poured out on the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Our Lord is looking for that kind of
devotion from us.
Some of us have been reluctant to let
him have it all.
It may take some, but we're hesitant.
What will it cost if I let him
have it all?
I don't know, but I do know this,
the fragrance of your need will fill the
whole house of God.
Let's pray.
Gracious Savior, how can we give thee less?
Thou didst not hesitate on that old rugged
cross.
Thou didst pour out thyself, holding nothing back.
Thou didst give thyself up totally as a
burnt offering, as a sacrifice for our sins.
Thou didst go all the way down into
the deep, dark valley, into the point where
from its depths thou didst cry, My God,
oh my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And all this thou didst do for us.
Why should it be so hard, our Savior,
to give thee back the whole box of
ointment?
Help us tonight, if we have any reserves,
to give it without question to thee.
Be thou pleased by what we do.
For thy name's sake, for thy glory, we
pray it.
Amen.