Laying Everything at Jesus’ Feet

We have the privilege of hearing the word of the Lord in a different way through the sermon. Today we have a very special guest, Dr. Bob Bakke, a man who has served the Lord for many years in different capacities, among them as a minister of prayer promoting revival and spiritual vitality in a denomination at the national level, the Evangelical Free Church, and most recently as executive director of the Global Day of Prayer, about which we are going to hear a little more in a moment.

A man of God, humble but also very profound, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, where he earned his doctorate and his Master of Divinity, and it has been a privilege for me to get to know him over these past few days, although we had already spoken by phone. But now we have the great joy and the great privilege of hearing the word of God that blessed us so much this morning. So let’s give him a big round of applause.

It is good to be here. On the day of Pentecost, God spoke through mysterious languages, and all the people were able to hear God in their own language. I do not know Spanish the way many of you know English, but I was able to discern that this is the language of the Holy Spirit this morning, and I know that you are my brothers and my sisters, and I delight in that fact.

And the other thing I want to say is that I want to thank your pastor, Pastor Miranda. When I was a pastor, it was very, very rare for me to give my pulpit to another person, and when I asked someone to be the guest preacher while I was present, they had better be good or they would never come back. So please pray for me.

I lead many, many people in prayer, but that does not necessarily mean that I am especially proficient or good at prayer. I was a pastor for many years before the Lord truly dealt with me and I concluded that I needed to be more of a man of prayer. Then I began a journey, a voyage through prayer, not because I was good at prayer, but because I wanted to be obedient to God.

Many years ago, I heard someone say that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing even if it is done badly. Let me say that again. If something is worth being done, or worth doing, it is worth doing even if you do it poorly. So many of us find ourselves paralyzed and do nothing because we cannot do things well and with excellence; instead of at least trying and perhaps being a little embarrassed in the process, we simply do nothing. But God says, wherever you are, no matter how poorly you may pray, how poorly you love your wife or husband or your children, or how poorly you do anything, begin in obedience to do what I am asking you to do, even if you cannot do it well.

So, as a pastor, I began to pray more and more, and each day God led me to guide increasingly larger numbers of people in prayer. Today, by the grace of God, I lead millions of people in prayer, both here in the United States and in other countries overseas, and only by grace, not by personal merit.

A few years ago, God gave me a dream, a vision: I was sitting in a public dining room, a restaurant in California, and I had some friends in ministry with me at the time. We could not sleep; we had just finished a television show at Jack Hayford’s church in California, and in that restaurant we began to dream about whether it might be possible to cover the entire globe in prayer, and that is where that dream was born. Over the next few years, I began to ask others whether they would be interested in joining me in that vision, a dream of having a global day of prayer on the day of Pentecost.

And finally, I was invited to go to South Africa to present that proposal to a group of ministers. That day there were 300 ministry leaders from different countries, from 200 countries of the world, and I presented my dream, and they embraced and accepted it. But while I was there in South Africa, I realized that something was already arising in the heart of Africa. A few months before I made my presentation, a businessman had had a dream. He dreamed of stadiums filled with people praying throughout Africa and other parts of the world, and flames, tongues of fire, went out from Africa’s prayers to other parts of the world until the whole world was covered in flames. And that had happened only a few months before I presented my vision.

That year, he rented a stadium, and 45,000 people came to pray. And when I gave my first presentation to those leaders a few weeks later, that first stadium he had rented some time earlier had already turned into eight stadiums. Three hundred and fifty thousand people had prayed on that second occasion.

And the following year, those stadiums became 128 stadiums—from eight to forty-something, to 128 stadiums, small and large—and on that occasion 3,500,000 people joined together. And in 2004, those 128 stadiums became 2,000 stadiums in 53 nations of the earth.

Now, the first year of the Global Day of Prayer—the original global event I had envisioned took place in 2005—and in that year, 2005, the first year of the Global Day of Prayer, the Africans changed the date of the prayer gathering from May 1 to the day of Pentecost, which is toward the end of May. And in our first year of the Global Day of Prayer, 2005, we had registrations from 156 nations, 10,000 prayer locations, and nearly 100 million people praying.

And last year, which was the second year of the Global Day of Prayer, here in Boston we actually gathered at Tremont Temple, but around the earth, in the second year, we had registrations from 199 nations, almost 15,000 gathering places for prayer, and nearly 200 million people praying throughout the earth on a single day. In India alone, a thousand cities prayed that day.

This is absolutely astonishing. And yet those great crowds, those people praying together on such a massive scale, are not really here in the United States. We here in America also need to rise up. This is the destiny of this nation.

I want to announce to you, brothers and sisters, that the third Global Day of Prayer is going to be held in the city of Fitchburg. We are deeply involved in organizing that event. It will be on a Sunday afternoon. Fitchburg is about 40 minutes from here. There is a place there with very convenient parking. We have rented a meeting place for about 5,000 people. We are expecting at least 3,000 to 5,000 people from all across the New England region, Boston, and these areas, and we hope that Lion of Judah will be well represented there. How many say amen to that? We are going to be part of what God wants to do globally. God is raising up a revival, and we have to be part of it. So we are going to be announcing that event. Get ready, because we are going to go there en masse, God willing.

Now, in England, for example, the crowds have been quite small in recent years. And this year, one of the largest stadiums in the city of London is being rented, and the mobilization there in London, interestingly enough, is being led by Africans who live there in London, who are mobilizing white Westerners to come and pray. They are helping to revive them. Perhaps for Boston to begin praying that way, we also need Latino expatriates to kindle the fire of prayer and revival.

This is the destiny of the nations. Whether or not this is the last generation in history, when history reaches its consummation, God will have gathered all the nations at the feet of Jesus, and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

I shared with some leaders a little while ago that a newspaper asked me to write a column comparing Islam with Christianity. In Islam, Allah, the Islamic God, speaks only one language, and to supposedly speak with God in a true sense, one must speak to him in that one language of his; and Allah’s revelation to the world came through only one man, his prophet, and at only one time in history. But Scripture tells us that when God began his church, he spoke in a mysterious language and in the Spirit, yet every language could understand it, every nation and tongue could understand it, and his intention is to redeem every nation, every ethnic group on earth. And today we represent that phenomenon. Hallelujah! Amen.

But up to this point, I have been speaking to you about immense and wonderful things. Now I want to turn to something small, to small things. The great crowds, the stadiums filled with people, are admirable and beautiful. It is astonishing to see those great leaders on their platforms in those stadiums, but now I want to turn to the place where true worship begins. And if we want to see history changed, we must take up the kind of prayer that we are going to see today in Scripture.

Please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel according to John, chapter 12, and before I ask Roberto to read this passage to us, I want to provide some context; I want to set the stage for this text. Imagine for a moment a stage for a drama, a theatrical play, and as the curtain rises to reveal this drama, many things are happening simultaneously on the stage. First, we see that the stage is filled with humanity. It is one of the high holy days on Israel’s religious calendar. If you were a Jewish man living anywhere within the geographical area of Israel, you were expected to be in Jerusalem that day. And if you were a Jewish man living outside the nation of Israel, you were expected to come to Jerusalem at least once in your life, on a pilgrimage to celebrate that great feast.

So, for weeks during that season of Pentecost, a great mass of humanity swirled around Jerusalem; they arrived in Jerusalem, and by the time that great religious feast came, the historian Josephus, who lived at that time, tells us that Jerusalem, which was normally a city of about 30,000 inhabitants, would suddenly fill with three million people. Can you imagine three million people suddenly arriving in Roxbury? They would fill the entire surrounding area. There were not enough rooms in the hotels or lodging places. People camped on the hills, wherever they could find space, and we are told that at night the campfires could be seen on all the hills surrounding Jerusalem. Jesus and his disciples also followed this practice, camping there on the Mount of Olives.

But let us look at that stage again, and we see many people there talking and milling around among one another. They are whispering to one another about this mysterious man named Jesus. There is great excitement in the crowd. There is anticipation in this crowd. There is anxiety in the crowd. Just a few days earlier, it was said that this man Jesus had raised a man named Lazarus from the dead, and while some thought that perhaps this Jesus might be the promised Messiah, the religious and legal authorities are furious with him and want him arrested. And the question among the crowd is: Will this man dare to come to Jerusalem? So there is anxiety in all the streets, and there is also anticipation among the people.

Now, here on the right side of the auditorium and the stage—imagine it, picture it—here at the end of chapter 11 in the Gospel according to John, we see a group of men in an emergency consultation session. These are the religious leaders of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, and they are furious; they are like a hornet’s nest, extremely upset. And the most learned member of that group of Jewish lawmakers stands up. His name is Caiaphas, the high priest, and he tells them, “Do not worry. This man Jesus is going to be arrested and killed so that all the people may be freed from his ministry.”

Now, on the other side of the stage is another man; we see him here on the stage. Perhaps he is the only educated man among the twelve disciples. He is the chief executive of the disciples, the administrator. His name is Judas. He is accustomed to stealing a little money from the purse. Between those men here on the right and this man on the left, Judas, John visually places one person at the center of the stage. With Jesus also at the center, we are introduced to a nobody, a woman with no name and no importance. Her life is not important; she has no power; she is barely known except by Jesus’ other friends. She is of no real importance or consequence to anyone, and this woman is about to transform and change the history of humanity.

Let us now imagine one more scene; here we are dealing with the literary scene, that is, the literary structure of the book of John. We are told that the Gospel has about four parts, about four divisions. It begins with a prologue, an introduction in which we are told that Jesus Christ is God, and then that introductory section is followed by what scholars call the Book of Signs. In that second section, the Apostle John records all of Jesus’ actions during his ministry—the miracles and signs that prove that he truly is God, the Son of God. In John Chapter 12, after his climactic miracle, which is the resurrection of Lazarus, the book turns; at that point it changes direction and moves toward what scholars call the Book of Glory, the third section. The Book of Signs, which is the second section, covers three years of Jesus’ ministry, while the Book of Glory, which is the second half, covers only three days of Jesus’ life and points toward the cross, toward his death and Jesus’ burial, and then toward his resurrection, when he returns to that glory which he had with the Father before the world began.

Now, where that change occurs, that turning point between these two sections—the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory, the two most important sections of the book—the hinge, the point on which the book turns, is precisely this moment that we are going to read about now.

Let us read it now. It is Chapter 12, verses 1 through 8, in the Gospel according to Saint John. It says:

“Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, who had been dead and whom he had raised from the dead, and there they prepared a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those seated at the table with him. Then Mary took a pound of very costly perfume made of pure nard and anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. And one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, who was to betray him, said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ But he said this, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief; and since he kept the money bag, he would take—he would steal—what was put into it. Then Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone; she has kept this for the day of my burial, because you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.’”

And I want the pastor to read verse 7 again. It says: “Then Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone; she has kept this for the day of my burial....’”

The first thing I want us to notice about this passage is how Jesus interprets and describes this event. He speaks about a spiritual mystery. He speaks of heaven’s purposes. He speaks of a time before history began, before Mary even existed, when God foresaw and envisioned Mary one day, looking ahead to the moment when Jesus would give his life for the salvation of the world. Before history began, God entrusted his purposes for history to this Mary who was to come: when Mary brought that treasure of hers and placed it at Jesus’ feet, and when she did it in the specific way that she did, the Lamb of God would then be ready to redeem all humanity. Did you hear that?

Before the world began, this was predestined by God. Mary had no idea whatsoever; she was completely unaware. That mystery was not in her mind, but God saw it in his mind before the foundation of the earth: when Jesus was worshiped in that wonderful way, the Lamb of God would then be ready and prepared to redeem the whole earth.

Let me ask you to do something. Take your hands and hold them out in front of you for now, just for a moment. Tell me, what has God placed in your hands? What treasure? What resources? What résumé? Children, human relationships? What treasures has God placed in your hands? Small ones, large ones. It may be that God already saw you before the world began, that he knew you before you even began to exist, and that he placed that treasure you have there in your hands so that, if you surrendered it and placed it at Jesus’ feet today, something in heaven would break open and God would then be prepared to redeem history and the earth.

What was that treasure Mary gave to Jesus? It was nard. It is a spice that comes from India and is extremely expensive, very costly. It was pure nard, highly refined. If one were a king, for example, there was nothing more valuable that could be given to someone. But that insignificant woman had it, and she surrendered it; she gave it to Jesus.

Now, what was that treasure? What did the treasure she gave to Jesus represent? For her personally, it was actually one of two things: it was either her retirement fund, her savings for old age, which perhaps her father had given her to save for the day of her old age so that she could sell it later; then, if she found herself sick or alone or abandoned somewhere, she would have this treasure and be able to sell it, take the money, and live on it. I want to ask you: Do you have savings like that for your old age? Do you have something very special for the future? Are you saving it for the day when you will need that nest egg of security? Some of us have retirement nest eggs, perhaps small ones; others have very large ones.

Now, Mary’s nest egg, Mary’s treasure, was worth at least a year’s wages. Not long ago, many of us paid our taxes, and I know that you know how much you made—or at least how much you told the IRS. Do not say how much, but ask yourself inwardly: How much did you earn this year? Now, how long did it take you to earn the money you made this past year? One year, right? Now let me ask you: How long would it take you to save what you earned last year? Perhaps five years? Ten years? Fifteen? That is a real treasure, isn’t it?

Now, if Mary’s father had given Mary that kind of valuable treasure—parents, if you had given that kind of treasure to your daughter—and you saw her pouring it out and scattering it like that in five minutes, spilling it all, even though it had taken you years and years to save enough to give her that treasure, what would you think of your daughter?

Now, if it was not her retirement savings, it was probably her marriage dowry; perhaps it was her entire dowry. In the past, in those days, young women, maidens, did not meet their prospective husbands at the movies or at a school dance; they did not meet them at McDonald’s or at work. Marriages were arranged by families or were purchased. And the women of that time had only a couple of options. For example, they could marry, and if one had a good dowry—if the woman had a good dowry—then she got a good husband; and if her dowry was mediocre, more or less, well, then her husband was also more or less; and if she had no dowry, well, good luck.

And if one did not purchase, so to speak, a marriage with a good dowry, then one might become a servant in a household and trust that perhaps they would take care of you for the rest of your life. And if you were a servant in someone’s house, you would probably end up begging in the streets; and if you did not want to beg, you simply sold yourself. Those were probably the only options available to a woman of that time.

So, let us understand that when Mary gives her treasure at Jesus’ feet for just five minutes of worship before the Lord, she is actually pouring out and surrendering before the Lord her entire future, her entire life, all her security. I want to ask: Is there that kind of love for God, for Christ, in this room? Does that kind of love for Jesus exist in this place?

Now, let us look at the way Mary gave that gift. This young woman removes the veil from her head. In the Jewish culture of that time, the only women who uncovered their heads were those who sold themselves. Mary uncovers her head, bows at Jesus’ feet, breaks open the vessel of nard, the perfume, and places it before that young rabbi at his feet. That young man is about thirty years old. Then, after pouring out the perfume, she takes her hair and begins wiping the perfume from the Lord’s feet with her own hair. And at that moment she offends everyone watching. If this scene were to take place in this room right now, for example, perhaps some of the elders here would immediately run to Pastor Miranda: ‘Hey, stop that, Pastor! Do not allow that kind of... Stop it at once!’ Mary is completely oblivious; she does not care what those around her think. It is a sacrifice of humility and personal humiliation, complete surrender and submission, and she does not say a single word. Her love for Jesus is far beyond her ability to express in words.

My brothers, my sisters, I believe that right then—at that time when this happened—the angels in heaven, all the angels of heaven, stopped in awe and amazement to behold what was happening in that place on earth at that moment. And it was following that kind of praise and worship offered to the Lord, it was after that moment, that worship filled the whole place; the fragrance of worship filled the whole place. It was upon that kind of worship from Mary that the Lamb of God then prepared to carry out his redemptive work for humanity. It is there, in that kind of scene of worship, that true prayer begins. This is prayer and worship transforming history.

Would you be willing to pray this kind of prayer, to pour out that kind of prayer this morning—this afternoon? In a moment, I want us to close the service, but I want to do so by imitating what Mary did. If you are physically able to do so from where you are seated, I want to invite you to kneel with me. If you can, if it is physically possible for you where you are, then do so; if not, do not worry. But if you can do it by leaning forward, however you feel comfortable, I ask you to kneel now wherever you can. And I want to ask you, insofar as you are able, to extend your hand before you like this, as though you were holding a possession in your hands that you are giving to Jesus, bringing your hands together and surrendering them to the Lord Jesus. Picture yourself surrendering your treasured possession to the Lord. And whatever God has placed in your hands, whether small or great, I call upon you, I invite you, to surrender it at Jesus’ feet, to place it at Jesus’ feet.

The elders who are surrounding the throne of God right now take off their crowns and lay them at Jesus’ feet, and then they fall on their faces in his presence and cry out in worship to him; they worship him. Let us worship him and give the Lord what we have, what belongs to us, our treasure. It does not matter what anyone else may think. The angels have stopped right now to behold it.

Worship the Lord. This room, this place, is filled with praise rising like perfume. Do you consider yourself a person of little value, of little significance? Do you feel that you have little to offer God? Mary was no one important; she was not well known. Nevertheless, through her act she prepared the way of the Lord to redeem the whole earth. Could it be that, because of your act of worship, things are being poured out upon the heavens right now, and that your worship, your prayer, is releasing things in the heavens of which you are not even aware—for the glory of Christ in your home, for the glory of Christ on the street where you live, for the glory of Christ in the city of Boston, for the glory of Christ throughout the nations, for the glory of Christ?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. You may stand. Glory to the Lord.

Well, I hope this moment is engraved upon our spirit, upon our being, and that we have been able to surrender to the Lord something even more valuable than what Mary surrendered to Jesus Christ: our life, our future, our energies, our dreams. The word of the Lord says that whoever loses his life for Jesus will gain it, and whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it. There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more redemptive, than for a man or a woman to give their life to Jesus Christ and say to him, Lord, I give you everything I have, everything I am; I give it to you.