At Home With Simon the Leper
When we love Jesus immensely, He uses us immeasurably.
That’s the lesson we’ll discover today in the home of Simon the Leper from the Gospel of John, chapter 12. Today we’re going to go inside a home, that of Simon the leper, but let me begin by sharing a bit of missionary history with you.
You may know the name, Gladys Aylward. She was born in 1902 in North London, and as a teenager she wanted to be a stage actress. But she had very little education, and at age fourteen she became a parlor maid. Not long afterward she was wonderfully converted to Christ. Almost immediately she felt God was calling her to China. But she had no education, no training, no experience, no connections, and no money.
In her late twenties, she approached a missionary society and applied for a position in China, but she didn’t meet their qualifications. Going back to her lodgings, she put her Bible on the bed, opened her purse and poured out all her money—which was two and a half cents. Here is what she prayed: “Oh God, here’s my Bible, here’s my money. Here’s me.”
Gladys managed to save up enough money to buy a one-way train ticket to China, and she boarded the train heading toward Asia at the Liverpool Street Station on October 15, 1932. She was a strange sight, dressed in an old overcoat, hauling two suitcases (one filled with food), and lugging a bag filled with pots and pans. As she passed through Russia, she realized she had unwittingly put herself in the middle of a warzone, because Russia and China were fighting. She found herself stranded in Siberia and in great danger, but she would not stop.
I don’t have time to tell the whole story, but what Gladys managed to do in China became known around the world. At one point when she was trapped with a hundred orphans by the Japanese invasion of China, she led them over the mountains to safety. Her biography gripped readers everywhere; her story moved the hearts of thousands of people; she spoke in the greatest churches on earth; she had tea with Queen Elizabeth; and her life was made into a movie starring Ingrid Bergman.
She was a simple parlor maid who said, “Oh God, here’s my Bible, here’s my money. Here’s me.”
The lesson is that when we love Jesus extravagantly, He uses us exponentially.
There is a woman very much like that in the Bible, and we’ve already met her in an earlier story. Now we’re going to meet her in the house of a man named Simon the Leper, who hosted our Lord Jesus for a meal in the town of Bethany only about a week before the Lord was murdered.
There are three accounts of this story. You’ll find them in Matthew, Mark, and John. All three accounts give different details but only John gives us the woman’s name. So let’s use his Gospel as our primary source and I’ll add some details from Matthew and Mark. The story is in John 12:1-11.
Scripture
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor.
Bethany, as we’ve seen in an earlier chapter, is only about two miles along the crest of the Mount of Olives from the Jerusalem overlook. This is where Jesus and His disciples stayed during the Passover, that final week of Jesus’ life. Jesus was beloved in Bethany because He had only days before brought Lazarus back from the grave. That story is told in the preceding chapter, John 11. The people of Bethany wanted to do something wonderful to celebrate.
Apparently a man named Simon the Leper had the largest house in town, so that’s where the dinner was held. John doesn’t tell us that, but both Matthew and Mark say the dinner was in the home of Simon the Leper. This presupposed another miracle that occurred in Bethany that isn’t recorded in the Gospels. If Simon had suffered from leprosy, he could not have occupied this house or hosted this dinner. So we can assume Jesus had healed him at some point in the past. Now he was using his large home to entertain Jesus and many of the people of the town.
Who else lived in Bethany? Mary and Martha, of course, along with their brother Lazarus. Verse 2 says: Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Whenever we see Martha, she is serving. She just cannot help herself. She was sedulous. Her DNA was packed with busyness and work and service and diligence. At the same time, every time we see Mary of Bethany in the Bible, she is at our Lord’s feet.
Verse 3 says: Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Matthew and Mark tell us this expensive oil-based perfume was in an alabaster jar. Many years ago, I was in Egypt and I bought an alabaster vase. My friend told me to handle it carefully because alabaster, as beautiful as it is, is a very soft stone and breaks easily. Archaeologists have found thousands of alabaster jars similar to the one Mary would have used. The oil was inside and it was sealed up. To use it, you had to snap off the neck of the jar so the oil could pour out.
Pure Nard was an oil extracted from a plant in India, and very rare, fragrant, and precious.
As the men were eating, Mary broke the stem of the bottle and began anointing the Lord with the ointment. Matthew and Mark say she poured it on the Lord’s head, which is how they anointed kings. John says some of it was used on His feet. She apparently drizzled this oil from Jesus’ head to his feet, and the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
This was the most extravagant thing anyone ever did for Jesus. If an ordinary Jewish carpenter or tentmaker or tradesman had gone into a perfume shop to buy this particular perfume for his wife, it would have cost the equivalent of a year’s salary.
This may imply that Mary and her family were very wealthy. I don’t have any cologne in my house that costs me as much as I’d earn in a year. I’ve heard it speculated that this was a gift Mary had been saving for her wedding. Nothing in the text indicates that. I might have one plausible explanation I’ll share momentarily, but we really don’t know why Mary had this valuable commodity.
One man was incensed when he saw her break the bottle and pour it over Jesus’ head. Look at verse 4: But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5 “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages,” 6 He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
Judas is the most tragic figure in the Gospel story. He spent three years with Jesus, listened to the greatest sermons ever preached, soaked up the finest teachings ever spoken, saw miracles like nothing since the days of Elijah, and walked beside our Lord week after week in the dusty byways of Galilee and Judea. Yet he never got the cynicism or selfishness or greed out of his heart.
Jesus made him the treasurer of the group, and he was businessman for the team. He paid for the meals and lodgings. He took the donations of those who contributed to the Lord’s ministry. The women who gave Jesus significant financial support, as we read about in Luke 8, would give the money to Judas. He paid the bills. But he also embezzled some of the money and hid it away for himself. He believed in Jesus, and he didn’t believe in Jesus. He was partly in and partly out; and whenever you are partly in and partly out you are in a war with yourself you cannot win.
There in front of everyone, Jesus said, “Leave her alone. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
The Bible makes it clear we’re to always be looking for a way to help someone in need. But this occasion was so significant, so unique in human history, that nothing else mattered. The story ends: 9 Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, 11 for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.
I don’t know that I’ve ever read a more self-convicting passage in the Bible. I’m afraid there’s a part of me that’s closer to Judas than to Mary; and I found myself asking the question: “When and how have I ever truly loved Jesus in a lavish way the way Mary did? Do I really love Jesus extravagantly? With abandon? Without limits? I found myself thinking of some of the great hymns that are composed as prayers asking for grace to love Jesus more. Many of the older hymn writers made this a theme, and their hymns were prayers that we may love Jesus more and more. The blind Scottish pastor, George Matheson, wrote:
O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
I learned a hymn in college that has remained among my favorites though I seldom hear it sung now. It’s by an Irish pastor and it says:
Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move.
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art,
And make me love Thee as I ought to love.
An American hymnist wrote:
More love to Thee, O Christ,
More love to Thee!
Hear Thou the prayer I make
On bended knee;
This is my earnest plea;
More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More love to Thee, more love to Thee.
Once earthly joy I craved,
Sought peace and rest;
Now Thee along I seek,
Give what is best;
This all my prayer shall be:
More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More Love to Thee, more love to Thee.
Why aren’t we praying these prayers and singing these songs? We need to love Jesus with extravagance for three reasons, as we see from what happened at the dinner at the home of Simon the Leper.
First…
Loving Jesus is an Enduring Reality
When we love Jesus more than anything or anyone, we are dealing with an enduring reality. Judas was dealing with temporary reality—a few coins, which would later haunt him and make him the most tragic man in the New Testament. But Mary somehow knew what she was doing.
Think of this. It was fitting for Jesus to receive a special anointing at both the beginning and the ending of His earthly ministry. The very first thing that happened to launch Jesus into the work for which He had come to earth occurred at His baptism, when the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended and anointed Him with power from the Heaven Father to prosecute His ministry.
Now three years later, Jesus was anointed at the beginning of the last week of His earthly service, and He was anointed with burial spices for His entombment. The oil dripped from His head to His feet, and In Matthew’s account, Jesus said, “When she [Mary] poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial” (Matthew 26:12).
In New Testament times, when someone died, their body was laid out and washed and coated with a perfumed oil, then taken to the tomb and buried that same day. The death of Jesus occurred near the end of the Sabbath day and there wasn’t time for that. But Mary was doing it in advance.
The question in my mind is this. Did Mary know Jesus was going to die, and did she do this deliberately? I think that’s possible. Jesus had been speaking repeatedly of His approaching death and crucifixion, but no one was taking it seriously. It seemed impossible to them. But Jesus had been telling things to Mary that others didn’t know about. Remember in an earlier episode where we find her sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to Him while Martha prepared the meal?
One commentator suggested that there were three people at the dinner at Simon the Lepers house who really thought Jesus was on the precipice of crucifixion—Jesus Himself, and Judas, and Mary.
So perhaps she knew very well what she was doing. Or perhaps she had a deep burden from God to do this thing, even though she didn’t know why. Perhaps the Holy Spirit had deeply prompted her heart. She wouldn’t have done this impulsively or frivolously. She had a deep prompting and Jesus interpreted it. He might have said, in effect, “The Holy Spirit deeply prompted you and told you to do this, even though you didn’t know why. But I’ll tell you why. I’m going to be murdered and buried so violently and suddenly that the only burial oil I’ll have is what you have just poured on Me. Just as the Holy Spirit anointed Me for my life, God has given you the privilege of anointing Me for my death.”
When we love Jesus, the Lord often prompts us in what we should do for Him. There have been times when I knew I had to give a certain sum of money—large, that is, to me and at the time—because I knew the Lord was prompting me to do it. There have been times I’ve engaged a stranger with a Gospel conversation because I felt an interior prompting of the Holy Spirit. There have been times I’ve gone out of my way to put my arm around a young man and pray for him because the Holy Spirit was telling me.
These are not temporary moments; they are enduring realities. So we need to keep praying: “More love to Thee, O Christ, more love to Thee; hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee.”
Second, not only is loving Jesus an enduring reality.
Loving Jesus has Eternal Repercussions
The second thing to notice is that loving Jesus has eternal repercussions. John doesn’t include this part of the table discussion in his account, so let’s read from Mark 14: 6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
Two things to notice. First—the way Jesus defined the word “love” here—it is doing what we can. He said, “She did what she could.” We cannot do what we cannot do; but we can do what we can to serve Jesus and be of service to others. If you visit the gravesite of the blind hymnist, Fanny Crosby, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, you’ll find those words engraved on her tombstone: “She Hath Done What She Could.”
Jesus said, in effect, “This act of love was so extraordinary that people will still be talking about it centuries into the future, wherever the Gospel is preached.” And here we are today, 2000 years later, still visiting the scene, visualizing the dinner, and learning from the women who anointed our Lord’s body for His burial.
When the Holy Spirit prompts us to do what we can do, spurred on by our love for Jesus, that has a long-lasting, ripple effect. I just finished reading the biography of the famous Baptist preacher, W. A. Criswell, whom I once had the pleasure of meeting. He was an unusual man and an unusual preacher. I wouldn’t call him eccentric, but he did have a lot of peculiar ways of going about his work. He was very uninhibited and he had a booming voice. When he was enrolled at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, he got up one morning so full of the love and joy of God that he couldn’t contain himself. He went out onto the courtyard of his dormitory and lifted his hands up to heaven and began singing a song that says: “It pays to serve Jesus. It pays to serve Jesus. It pays every step of the way. Though the pathway to Glory may sometimes be drear, you’ll be happy each step of the way.”
Years and years later when he was a far-famed orator and pastor, Criswell was preaching at a large event in Richmond, Virginia. After the service, a man named Paul Crandrall approached him and asked if he remembered the morning decades before when he had broken out in song.
Crandrall had been a student in the same dormitory, and that morning he was so discouraged and defeated that he had begun packing his suitcase. He had decided to leave the seminary, give up his dream of being a pastor, and find some other line of work. He was putting on his coat and ready to pick up his suitcase and walk out the door when he heard a noise coming from the courtyard below.
Crandall went over and opened the window and listened to Criswell sing, “It pays to serve Jesus,” and God spoke to his heart. He went back to his bed, knelt on his knees, and gave his life back to Christ. He unpacked his suitcase, went to class that day, and spent the rest of his life ministering for Christ in various churches across the country. Dr. Criswell would never have known that story but for a speaking engagement in Richmond. But it illustrates the fact that when we love Jesus, God uses us in greater ways than we know. Think of all the people who came to Christ through the ministry of Paul Crandall! Think of those who continued with the ripple effect!
Loving Jesus is an enduring reality; it has eternal repercussions! And third…
Loving Jesus is an Everlasting Relationship
Loving Jesus is also an everlasting relationship. In the Gospels, Mary of Bethany appears in three scenes. As we saw in an earlier chapter, she and Martha entertained Jesus and His disciples in Luke 10. Martha was busy serving and got herself overwrought. But Mary was sitting at His feet listening to every word that He spoke. That’s really the best way I know to fall more deeply in love with Jesus.
A young adult recently said to me, “I’m trying to read my Bible, but I don’t really know when or how to do it.” I suggested he pick a time each morning—that worked with his daily schedule—and have a physical Bible (an actual book) and a pencil. Open to a book of his choice—maybe Romans or Proverbs or Luke. I said, “Ask God to speak to you and then read with your pencil. As your pencil goes from word to word, you’ll find some phrases you want to underline, some verses you want to circle, some prayers you want to offer for yourself, some truths you want to remember.
Tell the Lord, “Thank you,” and then spend time talking to Him, letting Him know your items of praise and prayer. The next morning, begin where you left off. When you read God’s Word with a pencil, the Lord has a way of writing it on your heart.
The next time we see Mary is when her brother, Lazarus, had died, and in John 11, she fell at our Lord’s feet. And here in today’s story, she is anointing Him with oil and sitting again at His feet. In all three stories about her, we see her at the feet of Jesus.
P. B. Power was an Irish pastor in the 1800s, and he wrote a book about the feet of Jesus. I think it came from a sermon series he preached. I would never have thought of preaching a sermon series or writing a book on the feet of Jesus, but the New Testament really focuses a lot of attention there.
In the Gospels, all kinds of people came and fell down at His feet or they brought their sick loved ones and placed them at His feet. The woman in Luke 7 bathed His feet with her tears and poured perfume on them. The demoniac who was healed was seen in his right mind, clothed, and sitting at Jesus’ feet.
The feet of Jesus were nailed to the cross, and on the evening of the resurrection He told His disciples to look at His hands and feet. In the vision of the glorified Christ in Revelation 1, John saw the Lord’s feet like bronze glowing in a furnace. We will cast our crowns at His feet, and He will reign forever with everything under His omnipotent feet. Ephesians 1:22 says, “God has placed all things under His feet.”
Whenever we look at Jesus, we’re looking up. And when we learn to sit at His feet each day and read our Bibles with a pencil, as we learn to listen to His words and speak to Him in prayer, we will love Him more and more and more.
So here in the home of Simon the Leper around the supper table we can learn from Mary of Bethany that Loving God is an enduring reality. It has eternal repercussions, and it is an enduring relationship. So let’s make this the song of our heart:
More love to Thee, O Christ,
More love to Thee!
Hear Thou the prayer I make
On bended knee;
This is my earnest plea;
More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More love to Thee, more love to Thee.
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