They are in shock, they are appalled at what she's doing. And you look at this and you see what Mary has done. She's being impractical. She's being servile. She's making herself low. She's being scandalous. And you have to ask yourself, what is she thinking? I mean, what in the world is she thinking? And that's the point. She's not thinking. She's not thinking. She doesn't care what anybody else thinks about her. She's not thinking about any of this. She has her thought on one thing and one thing only. She's looking at Jesus. She's worshipping Jesus. She's adoring Jesus. And she does not care what anybody else thinks. It reminds me of a story in the Old Testament. King David, he is the king, kind of like Queen Elizabeth. Who's here now? King David. He's bringing the ark to Jerusalem. And he is so excited because now they're going to build the temple for the ark of God's presence. And David is so caught up in the worship. As they bring the ark, which is the symbol of God's presence up into the mount of Jerusalem, David begins to lead the parade. And he's singing. And he gets so caught up in worshiping. He's just dancing. And he's dancing. And he's just, he's so excited. His wife, Michael, looks out the window. And she sees him dancing. And he's just making a fool of himself. And she looks out. And she's just disgusted at him. And so he walks into the house. And she says, my, my, did the King distinguish himself today. Now, dancing around naked in front of the serving girls, like all the vulgar fellows. I mean, imagine coming home to her. I mean, and she's just ripping him apart, contempt. And David looks at her and he says, you haven't seen nothing yet. He says to her, he says, I'll become even more undignified than this. And I'll be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor. Wow. No one thing we know for sure about David. He was not a Presbyterian. I mean, not a chance. I don't think David lived in Avalon Park. I don't think he lived in East Orlando because he doesn't care about his dignity. He doesn't care what anybody thinks. He's caught up in the worship of God. And as you consider that, and you think about how David is so caught up in that where he doesn't think about what anyone else thinks, you know, why is it? Why is it that we oftentimes are so worried what other people will think of us? We're so worried about, you know, will they think we're not being practical? Will people talk about us? Will we, it looks scandalous if we really, we really worship. You know, we think that way. I mean, don't you? You know, I'm rhythmically challenged. And so when you have songs that are clapping, you know what I always look for? Other people are clapping so I know when to get the beat. The last thing I want to do is for somebody to hear me going, when you're going, you know, I can't stay on the beat. And so I'm conscious. I'm aware of what's going on. And I looked around some, you do the same thing. You're worried and you go, OK, I'm going to sing. But I don't want to sing too loud because what if somebody hears me. And so you're looking around and you're trying to figure out what is the appropriate way to do this? Because you don't want to come across as like, you know, geeky or undignified. And you're worried about what people think. I am too. And so the question is, how can we get to the point where we are so caught up in worshiping God and caring about Him that we don't worry about these things? How can we really be engaged with God with passion? Well, here's the key. We need to be more passionate about Jesus than we are about anything else. We need to be more passionate about Jesus than you are about yourself. The more you fall in love with Jesus, the more you'll lose yourself consciousness. Mary is slow and loved with Jesus. She doesn't care how many people are going to be talking about her around town the next day. She doesn't care. David is so consumed with the glory of God that he doesn't care what anyone thinks, even his wife. He doesn't care. And so because of that, because Mary is so caught up with the glory of Christ, she is impractical, she is servile, she is scandalous, because she knows that's how you honor God. Now, let me be clear, this is not mean. We're not saying that in order to honor God, your relationship with God is dependent on what you do. The point is not, if you're going to be right with God, you have to be impractical, you have to be servile, you have to be scandalous. That is not the point. It's not about your behavior, it's about the heart, right? It's all about the heart, but your behavior is a good indicator of what's going on with the heart. And the key is the heart. And if it's all about the heart, then we need to do a heart check. What is the condition of your heart? Because if the heart's not right, everything else is wrong. It doesn't matter what you're doing, how you're doing it, but if the heart is broken, everything is broken. There's a nurse who's working in the neonatology intensive care. She's watching this little baby. And this little baby, she was worried about it because the color of this baby was fluctuating. And suddenly the baby, just like that, turned blue black. Just blue black. And she is terrified because she has seen this before. And she goes into almost a near panic. She screams, she sounds the alarm. They call for the chief of neonatology. They send for the x-ray tech. And all the team is gathering around, and it's just commotion. And they begin to treat the baby for a collapsed lung. Because it's very common for babies who are in neonatal intensive care who are under on ventilators for them to have collapsed lungs. So they begin to prepare to treat the baby for the collapsed lungs. She says, it's not the lung, it's the heart. And they point to the heart monitor. And the heart monitor is beating a steady 130 beats a minute. And she says, look, the heart's fine. And so they begin to treat the baby for the collapsed lungs. She says, no, it's not the lung, it's the heart. And so there's still commotion going on. She grabs her stethoscope. She puts it to the baby's chest. And she yells quiet. The room gets quiet. She listens to the heart. There's no heartbeat. Nothing's happening. And she begins to work compressions on the baby's chest. What had happened, and she'd seen this before, what's called a pneumoperacardium, there's a sack around the heart. And the sack around the heart filled with air. And because the sack around the heart fills with air, the heart can't beat. It can't compress. It can't do what it's supposed to do. But the heart monitor measures electrical impulses. And so the nerves are firing at the steady 130 beats a minute. But the heart isn't compressing. And so the heart's not working. And she had seen this before. One time she'd seen this before where they misdiagnosed this, and the baby died. And so because of this, she wasn't going to let that happen again. She checks the heart, the doctor, the chief of neonatology walks into the room. She hands him a syringe. She says, it's the heart. pneumoperacardium, stick the heart. The doctor follows the nurse's orders. By this time, they had the X-ray machine set up, confirm the diagnosis, the baby's life was saved. See, it's about the heart. If the heart isn't working right, everything else is broken. And so what we need to do is we need to look at our heart. What's the shape of your heart? And don't just look at what the monitor says. Don't just look at saying, well, I'm going to worship. I say, I love Jesus, so on, and so forth. Now those things are good to check out. But look at the condition of your heart. Look deeper. Well, how do you know? Well, how do you know the condition of Mary's heart? How do you know that Mary was in love with Jesus? How do you know that she was caught up in worshiping him? Well, three ways. Number one, she was impractical. She was not practical. And so look at your own heart. Can you readily show any place that by the world's standards, you're being impractical with your resources for the glory of Christ. Are you giving away your money in radical proportions? By the way, I don't mean irresponsible. There's a difference between impractical and irresponsible. Irresponsible is when you're spending money you don't have. Irresponsible is when you're doing things with money and you're running up dead and you're not managing it well. Impractical is when you're using your money differently from the way the rest of the culture uses its money. When you look at your resources as a different way, here's how you know you're being impractical. If one of your friends who does not share your core values about Christ, about the world, about the needs of this world, and they don't share those values, if they were to look at your checkbook, would they look at that and say, you're crazy. What are you doing giving all this money away? Why are you doing this? And a practical person gives without necessarily getting anything in return. Because they are concerned about hurting and broken world. They're concerned about the glory of Christ. Are you impractical? Would your friends and neighbors be shocked if they saw the way you use your resources? Well, secondly, very servile. Can you readily show where you're humbling yourself to serve others? Are you a foot washer? Now, here's how you know you're a foot washer. A foot washer is a person who's willing to go and help with kids even though their kids are grown and they've already been there, done that, got the t-shirt. A foot washer is someone who's willing to get involved in setting up and taking down, boy, I remember what it was like starting a church, and y'all have more to set up and take down than we ever did. And the work and the foot washer is a person who doesn't think about that. A foot washer doesn't say, well, you know, that's not my spiritual gift. I want to work in my area where I'm really good at, and I'll let other people do this sort of thing. Foot washer doesn't think that way. A foot washer thinks like a servant. Servile people will do the dirty deeds that no one else wants to do. They'll do the deeds that other people consider beneath them. Servile people put the needs of others before their own and do it on a consistent basis. So the question to ask yourself is, when was the last time you did something that was beneath you, something you did for no other reason than because you loved Jesus more than anything else? That's a heart check. Third heart check is scandalous. Can you point to any situation where you've made a fool of yourself for Christ's sake? Now, I don't mean being an obnoxious offensive Christian. We have plenty of those already, we don't need more. But by being scandalous, what we mean is that you are so in love and raptured with Christ, so engaged in worshiping Him that you find yourself talking about Jesus to someone because you want that person to know how wonderful Jesus Christ is to, or to put it negatively. Have you ever found yourself not talking about Jesus when given the opportunity because you're worried about what other people might think of you? Ever had that happen? I'm paid to do this and I find that happening with me. And so you begin to realize how caught up at times we are in what other people think of us. But here's how you know, the heart check. Now think of Jesus in terms of your relatives. I imagine if your family is anything like most families, everybody has certain relatives you'd rather your friends never meet. And then you have other relatives that you're extremely proud of. I think of showing my age, I think of Jimmy Carter. Remember when Jimmy Carter was president? Who was Jimmy's brother? Billy, you think Jimmy ever got tired of saying, that's my brother? Billy, how's the new beer coming? It had to be embarrassing for him. And do you think of Jesus more like that or my coworker at UPC, Mike Osborne? Mike's a grandfather. If you don't know that Mike Osborne is a grandfather, it's only because you don't know Mike Osborne. If you know Mike Osborne, he's gonna tell you about his grandchildren. He's gonna show you pictures. He's gonna write blogs about them. He's got every chance he gets this morning. Mike's preaching in our church. He's talking about his grandchildren. I know it. I mean, he didn't tell me, I just know. Because Mike is so proud and excited about his grandchildren. He can't help it. He just can't help it. When you think about Jesus, it's Jesus more like Billy Carter or Mike Osborne's grandchildren. That's how you begin to see the glimpse of the heart. And so we look at this and say, are you in practical? Are you survival? Are you scandalous? How you answer those questions? You have a good indication of what your heart is like. And if you're not able to answer those correctly, then it may be sign of a heart problem. Well, what do you do? How do we do compressions on our own heart? So it begins to be right. How can you be, so how can you become joyfully and practical, survival and scandalous? It's very, very practical. You wanna, today you're gonna learn how you, as you leave here today, you can be a very impractical, scandalous, survival person. Didn't you always wanna know that? I can teach you these things in the wrong way, but let me teach you in the right way too. I think as we consider this, this is something that all of us want. It really is. You know, you wanna be free from other people's opinions, don't you? I mean, when you like just to live your life and really not care what other people thought, when you love just to be able to do, give your resources and use them and just to meet needs and to not worry or be self-centered. Wouldn't you just love to be able to serve others and to give yourself to that fully and actually enjoy serving others rather than just out of duty? You know, I think we do because most of us want to be people who live with passion. We want to be people who are passionate. Nobody wants to be milk toast. You know, it's why men love brave heart and women love Nicholas Sparks. It's the same thing. We want to be people who live with passion. Well, how do we have that sort of passion? We'll look again at Mary. Mary had passion because she had seen two things. Number one, Mary had seen what Jesus had done for her brother. Lazarus was her brother and the previous chapter, John chapter 11, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Here's what happened. Lazarus was sick. He's dying, Mary and Martha sinned for their good friend Jesus because they know he can help him. Jesus comes, Jesus gets there too late. He's dead, Jesus gets there. Mary and Martha see him. They say, where were you? We needed you, where were you? And Jesus says, where's Lazarus? They say, he's in the tomb. He says, move the stone. They say, we can't, he stinks. His body's already to begin to decay. He says, move the stone. They moved the stone. Jesus goes to the tomb and he says, Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus comes walking out in his grave clothes. Mary was there. She saw that. That was her brother. Imagine how you would feel about someone who did that for your brother. Mary is just, she adores Jesus. But that's not all. There's something more. Jesus tells us the true meaning of Mary's act. In verse seven, when everyone else is criticizing her for what she's doing, here's what Jesus says. He says, leave her alone. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You'll always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me. Now Jesus is not unconcerned about the poor. Jesus is very concerned about the poor. And those whose hearts are aligned with Jesus are always going to be concerned about the poor. That's a sign that we are a part of his family. But Jesus says there's something bigger going on here. There's something more important. I am more important than the poor. Because Jesus is saying, I'm about to die. Within one week, Jesus is going to die. And Mary, he says, is anointing him for his burial. Now, we don't know how much Mary understood what was happening with Jesus, but I think Mary understood a lot. Because there's a good indication here that Mary knew more of what was going on than any of Jesus' disciples. She was the one sitting there at Jesus' feet when he talked about how he was the sacrificial lamb who's come to die and take away the sins of the world. She had heard him as he talked about what he was doing and giving his life for his people. She had eyes, she could see the opposition growing among the political and the religious leaders. And so she knew this. She knew that Jesus had come and was going to give his life for his people and that stirred her heart. She sees this, she says, I see the one who's coming to give his life for me and she's moved by this. Because when you realize that Jesus is coming for you and to die for you, it's going to stir your heart. The more we understand God's love for us, the more we're going to love him. So what the Scripture tells us, John and one of his letters said, we love because he first loved us. If you want your heart to be filled with the love of Christ and to understand his great love for you, then you have to look at the cross. You have to look at the cross. Paul said in Romans, he says, very rarely, will anyone die for a righteous man. Although for a good man, someone might dare to die, but Christ shows us his love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Isn't that amazing? And when your heart is amazed at that, that God would die for you while we were still his enemies. And when our heart gets hold of that, it's going to give us a passion for him. And when we're passionate for him, we're going to be impractical. We're going to be servile, and we're going to be scandalous. There's a story told about Ginghis Khan, the great warrior king. And he went on a hunting trip. And he had his favorite hawk with him, this hawk, hawk was sort of like a hunting dog, and that it would fly around. It would find a rabbit or the deer or something for the hunting party to kill. And would point the hunters toward that. Well, he had his hawk with him, but the trip was a bus. They had not found anything. And he's coming back, and he's tired, and he's grouchy, and he's thirsty, and he's out of water. And he sees this little stream coming from a hillside. So he takes his little silver cup, and the water begins to trickle into his cup and to fill it up. The cup gets full, and he begins to drink it. And as soon as he puts it to his mouth, the hawk flies by and knocks it out of his hands. He's a little perturbed, he picks up the cup, goes back, waits for it to trickle full again, and just as he gets ready to put it to his lips, once again, the stupid bird comes and just knocks it out of his hands. And now he's angry. And so this time, he puts his cup there, he only gets it half full, he un-sheaths his sword, and he starts to put it to his mouth, and then he sees the hawk coming, and whack! And looks at the bird there, lying on the ground, a bloody mess and contempt. But now he's dropped his cup, and it's a little bit up the hill, and he goes up the hill to get it. As he's going up the hill, he realizes that little trickle, that little stream, is coming from a pool at the top. And it climbs up there, and he looks in the pool, and there is this large dead poisonous snake. And he realizes that that hawk that he just killed had possibly saved his life. He had just slain his own savior. When we look at Jesus and see that we had taken the one who is our friend and treated him as an enemy, and in spite of that, he still has loved us. He has not let us go. He's been relentless in pursuing us. Then the only response is that we love him. Is that we love him. And when we love him, we're going to be people who don't care what others think. We're not going to care about ourselves. We're going to care about his glory more than anything else. Let's pray. Our Lord, we do thank You that You do love us. We thank You for Your great compassion that You've shown for us and Your Son. Lord, we pray that You would fill our hearts with that love to such a degree that we are impractical, survival, scandalous people, not because we're duty bound to be so, because Lord, we know that won't work. We pray that You would stir our hearts because we love You more than anything else. Father, we do not want to be a passionate people. We don't want to be a people who simply go through the motions. We want to be a people who are overwhelmed with Your great love and so excited about Your love for us that we're living with passion and purpose. So fill us with Your love. Fill us with Your hope. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.