Laying Everything at the Feet of Jesus

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

A man of God, simple but also very profound, a graduate of Gordon Conwell Seminary, he has his Ph.D. and M.D. from there, and it has been a privilege for me to know him these days , although we had already spoken on the 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 it a big round of applause.

It's 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 could discern that this is the language of the Holy Spirit this morning and I know that you are my brothers and sisters and I revel in that fact.

And the other thing I want to say is I want to thank your pastor, Pastor Miranda. When I was a pastor it was a very, very rare thing for me to give my pulpit to someone else, and when I would ask someone to be the guest speaker and I was there, 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 doesn't necessarily mean I'm that proficient or good at prayer. I was a pastor for many years before the Lord really dealt with me and I concluded that I needed more to be a man of prayer and then I began a journey, a journey 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 bad. Let me say that again. If something is worth doing or doing, it is worth doing even poorly. So many of us find ourselves paralyzed and do nothing because we can't do things well and with excellence, instead of at least trying and perhaps embarrassing ourselves in the process, we just 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 can't do it right.

So as a pastor I began to pray more and more and God led me to lead larger and larger numbers of people every day in prayer, and today by the grace of God I lead millions of people in prayer , both here in the United States and also 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 soup kitchen, a restaurant in California and I had some ministry friends with me at the time. We couldn't sleep, we had just finished a television show at Jack Hayford's church in California, and in that restaurant we began to dream if it was possible to cover the entire globe in prayer and that dream was born. And over the next few years I began to ask him and others if 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 ministerial leaders from different countries, from 200 countries around the world, and I presented my dream and they embraced and accepted it. But when I was there in South Africa I realized that something was already coming up in the heart of Africa. A few months before I made my presentation, a businessman had a dream. He had dreams of stadiums full of people praying across Africa and other parts of the world and from the prayers in Africa went flames, flames to other parts of the world until the whole world was covered in flames. And that had been 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 ago, that first stadium that he had rented some time ago had become 8 stadiums. 350,000 people had been praying on that second occasion.

And the next year those stadiums became 128 stadiums, from 8 to forty-something, to 128 stadiums, small, large, this time 3,500,000 people joined. And in the year 2004 those 128 stadiums became 2000 stadiums in 53 nations on earth.

Now, the first year of the global year of prayer, and the original global occasion that I had was in 2005, and in that year 2005 the first year of the global day of prayer, the Africans changed the day of meeting for that prayer from May 1 to the day of Pentecost which is towards the end of May. And our first year of the 2005 global day of prayer, we had registrations from 156 nations, 10,000 places of prayer, and close to 100 million people in prayer.

And last year, which was the second year of the global day of prayer, here in Boston we actually met at Tremont Temple but around the earth we had registrations the second year from 199 nations, almost 15,000 places meeting to pray and close to 200 million people praying all over the earth in a single day. Only in India a thousand cities praying that day.

This is absolutely amazing. And yet those large crowds, those people praying like this en masse are not really here in the United States. We here in America need to rise up too. This is the destiny of this nation.

I want to announce to you, brothers, that the third global day of prayer is going to be in the city of Fitchberg, we are very involved in organizing this activity, it is going to be on a Sunday afternoon. Fitchberg is about 40 minutes from here. There is a very convenient place there for 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 over the New England region, Boston and these areas, and we hope that Lion of Judah will be well represented there. How many say love 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're going to be announcing that activity. Get ready because we are going 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 biggest stadiums in the city of London is being rented and the mobilization there in London, interestingly, is from Africans who live there in London, who are mobilizing white westerners to come and pray. . They are serving to enliven them. Perhaps also for Boston to be able to pray in this way we need Latino expatriates who also raise the fire of prayer and revival.

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

I was sharing 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 truly supposedly speak to God you have to speak to him in that only language of his and Allah's revelation is through a single man, his prophet, to the world and in a single time in the history. But the Scripture tells us that when God began his church he spoke in a mysterious language and in the spirit but every language could understand him, every nation and tongue could understand him and his intention is to redeem every nation, every ethnic group on earth, and us Today we represent that phenomenon. Hallelujah! Amen.

But so far I have been talking about immense and wonderful things. Now I want to turn to something small, small things. The big crowds, the stadiums full of people are admirable and beautiful. It's amazing to see such great leaders on their platforms in those stadiums but I want to turn now to a place where true worship begins. And if we want to see history changed, we must assume the type of prayer that we are going to see today in Scripture.

Please look in your Bibles at the Gospel according to Saint John, Chapter 12 and before I ask Roberto to read this passage for us, I want to provide you with a context, I want to set the scene for this text. Imagine a platform for a moment for a drama, a dramatic play, and as the curtain rises to display this drama, there are many things that are happening simultaneously on the platform. First we see that the platform is full of humanity. It is one of the high holy days of the religious calendar of Israel. If you were a Jewish man you were expected to be in Jerusalem that day, a male Jew living within the geographic area of all of Israel. And if you were a Jewish man living outside the Israelite nation you were supposed to come to Jerusalem at least once in your life, on a pilgrimage to celebrate that great festival.

So for weeks at that time of Pentecost a great humanity swirled around Jerusalem, they arrived in Jerusalem and by the time that great religious festival arrived the historian Josephus who lived at that time tells us Josephus that Jerusalem, which was normally a city of about 30,000 inhabitants at the moment was filled with three million people. Can you imagine 3 million people suddenly arriving in Roxbury? It would fill everything around. There were not enough halls or rooms in the hotels, in the lodging places. People camped on the hills, wherever they could find a space, and at night we are told that the bonfires could be seen on all the hills surrounding Jerusalem and Jesus and his disciples also practiced this camping there on Mount the Olives.

But let's look at that platform again, and we see a lot of people there talking and milling about with each other. They are whispering to each other about this mysterious man called Jesus. There is great excitement in the crowd. There is anticipation in this crowd. There is anxiety in the crowd. Just a few days ago this man Jesus was said to have just resurrected a man named Lazarus, and while some thought that Jesus might be the promised Messiah, religious and legal authorities are furious with him and want him arrested. And the question in 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 to the right of the auditorium and the platform, imagine, visualize; here at the end of Chapter 11 in the Gospel according to Saint 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, very upset. And the most learned of that group of Jewish legislators stands up, his name is Kaifás, the high priest, and he tells them, don't worry, this man Jesus is going to be arrested and killed so that all the people will be released from his ministry.

Now, on the other side of the platform, there's another man we see here on the platform. Perhaps the only educated man among the 12 disciples. He is the main executive of the disciples, the administrator, his name is Judas. He is used to stealing a little money from the bag. Between those men here on the right and this man on the left, Judas, on the platform visually John places a person in the center of the platform. With Jesus also in the center and we are presented with a lady nobody, she has no name, it doesn't matter. Her life is not important, she has no power, she is hardly known by the other friends of Jesus. It has no importance or consequence for anyone really and this woman is about to transform and change the history of humanity.

Now let's imagine another scene, here it is the literary scene, that is, the literary structure of the book of John. We are told that the Gospel has about 4 parts, about 4 divisions. It begins with a prologue, an introduction where we are told that Jesus Christ is God, and then that introductory section is followed by what scholars call the Signs Section. In that second section the Apostle John records all the actions of Jesus during his ministry that prove the miracles and signs that prove that indeed he is God, the Son of God. In John Chapter 12, after his climactic miracle which is the raising of Lazarus, the book turns, then there it makes a change and turns to what scholars call the Book of Glory, the third section. The Book of Signs, which is the second section, covers 3 years of Jesus' ministry and the Book of Glory, which is the second half, only covers 3 days of Jesus' life and points towards the cross, towards his death and the Jesus' burial and then his resurrection to return to that glory he had with the Father before the world began.

Now where there is that change, that turn between these two sections, the signs section and the glory section, the two most important sections of the book, the hinge, the point where the book turns is precisely at this moment that we are going to read now.

Let's read it now, it is Chapter 12, from 1 to 8 in the Gospel according to Saint John, it says:

“Six days before Easter Jesus came to Bethany where he was Lazarus, who had been dead and whom he had raised from the dead, and they made him a supper there. Marta served and Lazarus was one of those who were sitting at table with him, so Mary took a pound of very expensive perfume of pure spikenard and anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair and the house was filled with the smell of the fragrance. And one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon who was to betray him, said, 'Why was not this perfume sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?' But he said this, not because he cared for the poor. , but because he was a thief, and having the monetary bag he subtracted, he stole, what was thrown into it. Then Jesus said, "Leave her alone, for the day of my burial she has kept this, 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, for the day of my burial she has kept this....”

The first thing I want us to notice about this passage is how Jesus interprets and describes this event. He talks about a spiritual mystery. It speaks of the purposes of heaven. It tells of a time before the story began, before Mary even existed, when God anticipated and envisioned Mary one day, looking forward to the moment when Jesus would lay down his life for the salvation of the world, God before the history entrusted to this Mary that she was to come her purposes for history, that when Mary brought that treasure of hers and laid it at the feet of Jesus and when she did it in the specific way that she did, the lamb of God would then be ready to redeem all mankind. Did you hear that?

This, before the world began, was predestined by God. Mary had no idea, she was completely ignorant, this was not on her mind, that mystery, but God saw it in her mind before the foundation of the earth, that when Jesus was worshiped in that wonderful way then the lamb of God he would be ready and prepared to redeem the whole earth.

Let me ask you to do something, take your hands and place them in front of you for now, just for a little while. Tell me, what has God placed in your hands? what treasure? what resources? what curriculum? Children, human relations? What treasures has God placed in your hands? Small, big. It could be that God already saw you before the world began and that he knew that you even began to exist and that he put that treasure that you have there in your hands, so that if you delivered it and put it at your feet of Jesus today something in heaven would be broken and God would then be prepared to redeem history and the earth.

What was that treasure that Mary gave to Jesus? It was spikenard. It is a species that comes from India and is extremely expensive, expensive. It was pure spikenard, highly refined. If one was a king, for example, there was nothing more valuable that could be given to someone. But that little woman had it and gave it to her, gave it to Jesus.

Now, what was that treasure, what was that treasure that he gave to Jesus? It was really personally one of two things, it was either his retirement deposit, for old age, his savings, that perhaps his father had given him that treasure to save for the day of his old age to sell it later , so that if she was sick or alone or abandoned somewhere, she would have this treasure and be able to sell it and get the money and live from it. I want to ask you, do you have savings like this for your old age, do you have something very special for the future? Are you saving there for the day when you need that nest of security? Some of us have retirement nests, small perhaps, others have very large ones.

Now, Maria's nest, Maria's treasure was worth at least a year's salary. Many of us recently paid our taxes and I know you know how much you did, or at least how much you told the IRS. Don't say how much, but tell yourself inside yourself, how much did you earn this year? Now, how long did it take you to earn that money from this past year? One year, right? Now let me ask you, how long would it take you to save what you earned last year? Maybe 5 years? 10 years? fifteen? That's a real treasure, isn't it?

Now, if Maria's father had given that kind of precious treasure to Maria, parents, if you had given that kind of treasure to your daughter, and you saw her spilling that and scattering it like that on 5 minutes, spreading it out and it clearing up, and it would have taken you years and years to save up, to be able to give that treasure to her, what would you think of your daughter?

Now, if it wasn't her retirement savings, it was probably her dowry, maybe it was her entire dowry. In the past, in those days young girls, maidens didn't meet their potential boyfriends at the movies or at a school dance; They couldn't find them at McDonalds or at work. Marriages were arranged by families or bought. And the women of that time only had a couple of options: for example, they could get married and if one had a good dowry, if the woman had a good dowry, well, she would get a good husband, and if her dowry was more or less mediocre, well then her husband was also more or less; and if she had no dowry, well, good luck.

And if you didn't buy, let's say, a marriage with a good dowry then you could become a servant, let's say, in a house and trust that maybe they could 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 on the streets begging and if you didn't want to beg you would just sell yourself. Those were probably the only options a woman of that era had.

So, Mary, let us understand that when she delivers her treasure at the feet of Jesus for just 5 minutes of adoration before the Lord, she is pouring out and surrendering before the Lord, in reality, all her future, all his life, all his safety. I want to ask, is there that kind of love towards God, towards Christ in this room? Is there that kind of love for Jesus in this place?

Now, let's look at how Mary delivered that gift. This young woman removes her veil over her head. In the Jewish culture of that time, the only women who uncovered their heads were those who were sold. Mary uncovers her head, bows at Jesus' feet, breaks the cover of the glass of spikenard, of perfume, and places it in front of that young rabbi at his feet. That young man is around 30 years old, more or less, she then takes his hair and after pouring out the perfume, she begins to dry the perfume of the Lord's feet with her own hair. And at that moment, it offends everyone who is watching this scene in the room, it would have happened in this space right now, for example, maybe some of the elders here would be running to Pastor Miranda, 'hey, stop that, Pastor, don't let that kind of…..Stop it right away.' Maria is completely unnoticed, she is not interested in what those around her think. A sacrifice of humility and personal humiliation, complete performance and dedication and she doesn't 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 now the angels in heaven, at that time when this happened, I believe that all the angels in heaven stopped in amazement and surprise to contemplate what was happening in that place on earth at that time and it was after that kind of praise and worship that was given to the Lord, it was following that moment and that worship filled the whole place, the fragrance of worship filled the whole place. It was on this kind of adoration of Mary that the Lamb of God then prepared to carry out his redemptive work on humanity. It is there, in that type of worship scene, 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? I want us to close the service in a moment, but I want to do it by imitating what María did. If you can physically from where you are sitting there, I want to invite you to kneel with me, if it is possible for you, if it is physically possible for you where you are, otherwise don't worry, but if you can do it leaning forward, as you feel comfortable, I ask you to kneel right now where you can there and I want to ask you that as much as you can that you extend your control like this in front of you, as if you have a possession that you are handing over to Jesus in your hands. hands, joining their hands and surrendering their hands to the Lord Jesus. Visualize yourself surrendering your treasured possession to the Lord. And whatever God has delivered into your hands, be it small or big, I call you, I invite you to deliver it at the feet, place it at the feet of Jesus.

The elders who are now surrounding the throne of God take off their crowns and place them at the feet of Jesus and then they stand on their faces in his presence and shout adoration to him, they adore him. Let us adore him and give to the Lord what we have, what is ours, our treasure. It doesn't matter what anyone else might think. The angels just now have stopped to contemplate.

Worship the Lord. This room, this place is full of praise that ascends 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 not a big deal, she was not well known, however through her act she prepared the way for the Lord to redeem the whole earth. Could it be that about your act of worship there are things that are spreading right now over the heavens and that your worship, your prayer is unleashing things in the heavens that you are not even aware of 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 across the nations, for the glory of Christ?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. They can stand up. Glory to the Lord.

Well, I hope that this moment is serious in our spirit, in our being, that we have been able to render to the Lord something even more valuable than what Mary gave 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 win it and whoever wants to preserve his life will lose it. There is nothing more beautiful, more redemptive than a man, a woman giving their life to Jesus Christ and saying, Lord, I give you everything I have, everything I am, I give it to you.