Why do people really come to Jesus?

In John 12:1-11, two people sit at the same table with very different hearts: Mary, who pours out her treasure on Jesus, and Judas, who only wants to use Him. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt examines the motives behind our worship.

Days before the cross, Mary anoints Jesus with a jar of costly perfume — worth nearly a year’s wages — and wipes His feet with her hair. It is extravagant, humble love. Judas objects that the money should have gone to the poor, but he is a thief who cares only for himself. Dr. Holt contrasts these two hearts and warns that many seek Jesus for what He can give them, not for who He is. The question each of us must answer is why we really come to Him.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did Mary anoint Jesus? Out of deep love and worship, giving Him her most costly treasure to prepare Him for burial.

2. What was wrong with Judas’s objection? He sounded generous but was a thief who cared nothing for the poor. His heart wanted gain, not Christ.

3. What does this teach about our motives? It asks why we really come to Jesus — to use Him for our own ends, or to love and worship Him for who He is.

“Let her alone; she has kept this for the day of My burial.” — John 12:7 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This sermon is part of the John Explained study from New Geneva Theological Seminary. Find more verse-by-verse teaching across the Bible at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[gentle music] Throughout Christ's ministry, large crowds followed him, and yet their reasons for following were often very different indeed. In today's study, we'll contrast the motivations of two key individuals, Mary and Judas. As we'll see, Mary's love for Jesus was wholehearted, and she anointed his feet with all that she had. By contrast, Judas viewed Jesus as just a tool for his own personal gain.

If you remember when Jesus was born, there was a guy who says, "Jesus, the Messiah, he's come. I've heard the rumors he's come, and I'd like to go and worship him." And he sent out people to go find the baby so he could worship him. What was that man's name?

Herod.

Herod. Is Herod a good guy or a bad guy? From the very start, people pursued Jesus. That's never been the hard part, but the intentions by which they did so were not always good, godly, or righteous. Now, as Jesus aged, as he grew up, the same remained true. After he began his public ministry, people sought him out for all sorts of different reasons. One of the main reasons that people sought out Jesus was because he could do things for them. Let's say that you had cancer, that you had sickness, that you were paralyzed, that you were blind, you had a loved one, perhaps, that suffered from these things. And there was a guy, this one guy, this itinerant rabbi, who the minute he touched or spoke or saw your loved one, could heal them of whatever ailed them. What would you do on behalf of your loved one? What would you do on behalf of yourself if you suffered and you heard that there is one, he's maybe 40 miles away, and he can do these miracles? In fact, everyone that he comes to, he performs this healing miracle, and there's evidence of it all across the countryside. What would you do? You'd run there. You'd drop what you were doing. You'd say, "He's 40 miles away. I can get there. I will get there because my life depends on it." So all manner of people sought him out for healing, for miracles, maybe for deliverance, for something he could do for them. Others sought him out with more malevolent intentions. Remember the Pharisees, they kept coming up in our first 11 chapters in our study of John. Every time the Pharisees came up, they came to Jesus. They approached Jesus. They sought Jesus out. But their intention was to do what? Their intention was to test him, to try him, to trap him, and fail that, just to kill him. How many times in the previous chapters did we see that the Pharisees would come and meet with Jesus, and that encounter would end with them looking around for stones with which to throw at him? People sought him out everywhere he went. But if you're Jesus, as you saw someone coming towards you, routinely, they fell into one of these two camps. They wanted something from you, or they wanted to hurt you, kill you, test you, try you, trap you, what have you. Almost everyone fell into that camp. Not Mary. Not Mary in today's text. In today's text, we're going to see multiple people that are going to be either reclining with Jesus, sitting with Jesus, eating with Jesus, coming to Jesus, traveling to Jesus. There's all manner of different motivations laid bare here. However, the only motivation that really stands out in a positive sense in today's text is that of Mary. She sees Jesus not necessarily as a means to an end, but she sees him as who he is, as God in the flesh, came down from his throne to die for her sins. She saw him as a Messiah, as a deliverer, as the Christ, as Martha, her sister, had conveyed to Jesus just one chapter earlier. But at the same table as we see Mary, we also see Judas, and there is no greater contrast of motivations than at this very table in John, chapter 12. Let me reread verses one through three, and then we'll just work our way through this shorter passage this morning. Verses one through three. "Then six days before the Passover," which is significant, "Jesus came to Bethany," which is about 40 miles outside of Jerusalem. This is a suburb of Jerusalem. Bethany's on the other side of the Mount of Olives, not far away. That's where he came. So six days before the Passover, he comes to Bethany, "where Lazarus was, who had been dead, who he had raised from the dead. And there they made him a supper, and Martha served. And Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him. Then Mary took a pound." I want you to remember that. This is a pound. "A pound of very costly perfume, oil of spikenard, and she anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the oil." All right. What is going on right here? You and I live in a Westernized culture. Has anyone ever come to your house and you said, "My first reaction is going to be take off your shoes and wash your feet"? Have you ever done that? Has anyone ever done that to you? Probably not. In Eastern cultures, especially Eastern cultures of antiquity, this was normal. You travel 40 miles. If you come from many different directions, you came through dirt and dust and soil and mud and the like, and you come into someone's house, then the way to show hospitality is to clean their feet, to wash their feet for them. This is one of the greatest acts of hospitality and servitude that you can do. So it's not a shock or a surprise that Mary would do that to Jesus. What is a shock is twofold. Number one, it's one thing to wash feet, and it's also one thing to put a couple drops of perfume on them so they don't smell like feet anymore. That's understandable, and they did that. What does she do? A, it's not a couple of drops of perfume. It's a pound. I've never tried to weigh what a pound of perfume looks like, but I imagine it is quite a bit. This is a pound of oil of spikenard. This is the most expensive thing imaginable. This was something she had been saving up. Now, why would anyone save up a pound of perfume in that day and age? They're the most costly perfume around. Well, they did it for one of two reasons. The first reason was this. They saved it for their own burial. They saved it so someday someone could anoint them. The other reason in this culture that someone might do that is as a dowry. You saved up something significant, something very, very valuable, and this was a gift, a dowry upon one's wedding. Whatever the case is, you saved it for you.

Mary does not. Mary saved this up, and then when Christ Jesus comes into her house, out of love and compassion for him and out of thankfulness. What had he just recently done for her? What had he just done for Mary? He raised her brother from the dead. This has been the greatest couple days of her life, and it's all because of him. Jesus the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. This one did this for me. What would I withhold from him? What would I withhold? I will not withhold that which is most prized in my whole household, and that is this pound of costly perfumeRather than have Jesus come on in, just put a dollop on each toe or something like that, I'm going to pour this out. Not only does she pour this out, the entirety, what else does the scripture recorder do? It says she washed his feet with her hair. Now, in Jewish culture, letting your hair down, this is not normal. The women who let their hair down in this culture were women of ill repute in this sort of public environment. Here, she lets her hair down. She uses her hair as the means to wipe and clean the feet of her savior. Not only is this an extravagant gift, but it's demonstrated, it's provided in the most extravagant, tender, sensitive, loving, caring, gracious, humbling way she could possibly give it. Now, in verse one, we see that all this occurred six days before the Passover. Six days later, he was going to be crucified. Six days later, he was going to die. Now, he knew that going in. None of this was a surprise to Jesus. When people think that Jesus was just kind of learning as he went, just kind of this wonderful, benign, helpful guy who just ended up on a cross, that's not the way this works. We know that Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew exactly when it was going to happen, knew exactly who was going to do it to him, and he routinely told his disciples what was about to happen, and they regularly said, "No, Jesus, not for you." In Matthew 20, he tells them, he says, "We're going to go to Jerusalem. Behold, we're going to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes." Not just to the pagans or the secularists. They're going to be betrayed to the chief priests, to the guys in the tall pointy hats who should've known better. The Son of Man's going to be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and then deliver him to the Gentiles, to Rome, to mock and to scourge and to crucify. And on the third day, he will rise again. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the timeframe in which it was going to go down. He has limited hours with which to work with, so what does he choose to do? He says, "I got limited time. I'm going to spend it with the people I love, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus." And so that's what he did. He goes to have this meal with them. And at this meal, we see in verses one through three that Mary anoints his feet, and people in the room, as they watch this go down, they were aghast. Why? Why were they aghast? Why were they astonished? Why were they startled? Well, again, the significance of the gift. The only reason that you piled up this significant quantity of perfume was to utilize it for some other purpose, and here she used it for him. And they were surprised. They knew Jesus is great and wonderful and important and all that sort of stuff, but none of them had done this. There's no record of any of the disciples, until they poured out their lifeblood years later, there's no record of any of them giving Jesus a gift like this. And so they look on, they don't know what to make of it, and one of them speaks up and says, "Nope, this woman, she done wrong." And that's what we're going to see in our next verses. Let's look at verses four through eight. "But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray him, said this: 'Why? Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denari and given to the poor?'" Listen to the benevolence. To the poor, he says here. Verse six. "Now this he said not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and he had the money box, and he used to take what was put into the money box." Verse seven. "But Jesus said, 'Leave her alone. She has kept this for the day of my burial. For the poor you will have with you always, but me you will not have always.'" All right. As we said outside, here we have the two competing, the two antithetical motivations by which two people came to Jesus this day. Two people who you would say are in his inner circle. Two very competing, very contrasting motivations that we see here. The first one is Mary. Mary humbles herself as we talked about. She exalts Jesus. She adores Jesus. She worships Jesus at great personal expense to herself. Now, the second motivation, the contrasting motivation, is Judas. And Judas sees this go down, and instead of seeing it through the eyes of Jesus, who saw it as this wonderful thing that Mary had done, he sees this as just stupid. He says, "Dear heavens, she poured it on his feet. There was any amount of other utility this could've had." And then he gets on his high horse, and he says, "If we had sold that perfume, do you know how much money we could've got for that?" 300 denari. Significant number in that day. In fact, it was very significant. Do you know how much money Judas got for betraying Jesus? You remember how much Judas got for betraying Jesus? 30 pieces of silver. This perfume, in that day's currency, was worth 10 times that. You understand? He sold Jesus out for one-tenth what this perfume cost. And so you understand, he sees it being poured out, and it's like those cartoons where the eyes bug out of the head. That's what he does here. And then again, he has to front it with some righteous indignation. Now, he knows what he's going to do. In his mind, if that had gone in the poor box, what could he have done? He could've helped himself because that's what he would routinely do. I don't know if all the disciples knew that at the time. They probably compared notes later on and realized that this guy had been ripping them off. With that said, that was his desire, to take this for himself. And now, because she didn't give it to the poor, now he can't have any of this poor woman's money. This is the most slime-ballished display. Judas, Herod, other people in the New Testament who feigned, "I want to worship him. I want to be with him. I'll be his treasurer. I'll be his follower." Not so much. Malevolent, self-centered, selfish motivations, and that's what we see here in Judas. But the oddest thing is this. If you're at 10,000 feet, let's say you're looking down on this table from up above, and you're looking down at what's going on. Well, you look down, you see there's Jesus sitting there and all these other people, and you would assume they're all his followers. If you were sitting in the room looking at the other people in the room, you would've assumed they're all his followers. From 10,000 feet, from 10 feet, you would assume that their motivations were all basically uniform. They love Jesus. They follow Jesus and the like. And yet, in the midst was this one, was this Judas.So Mary's motivation. Briefly, I'm going to recap hers, then move to Judas'. Mary's motivation, she was there because she loved him. She poured out the perfume because she loved him. She poured out the perfume because she believed in him. She had evidence to believe in him. She looked over and saw Lazarus right there. When Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth. I'm the resurrection and the life," she knew, she knew, she knew that he could and would do all that he had promised. Why? Because she looked at Lazarus and said, "My brother was dead and now he's alive. Truly, this man can do anything." So she was there because she loved him, she loved Jesus, but she also believed in him. She trusted in this one, that he could fulfill the promises that he had made, not just for resurrection in this life, but for resurrection in the life to come. That's what we saw last week when Jesus talked to Martha. She knew that Jesus was capable of doing just about anything, but he says, "Do you know this? I'm not only capable of saying, 'Lazarus, rise,' I'm capable of saying, 'Lazarus, rise and join me at the throne.' Do you believe that?" Martha said yes. Mary says yes through her actions. She was doing all this out of faith and trust. She was following Jesus out of love and devotion and worship and the like. Judas, though. Judas. Why was Judas following Jesus? Let's presume that he was not a Christian, which he wasn't. Let's presume that he didn't love Jesus. How could he? He betrayed him. He betrayed him with a kiss, right? But he still betrayed him. So why was he following Jesus then? What do you think? Well, the answer is in these verses. The money. He was following Jesus because Jesus was his meal ticket. He was following Jesus because being the treasurer of the Messiah was a pretty good gig, and he could routinely help himself. Have you ever turned on the TV at 2:00 in the morning and found a televangelist? I'm dating myself, but back in the day, you'd go over to the television and turn a knob, and ah, there's some guy, and he's selling prayer cloths at 2:00 in the morning. "Touch the screen. If your hand touches the screen, touch the camera. You'll be healed of whatever ails you. Also, send me your money." Right? That's the basic premise of televangelists. Televangelists, not every last one of them, but I think the bulk of them, many of them, certainly, have been motivated to wear the clerical collar and put a Bible on the table and say holy and pious things. Why? Because it helps them to get their second Learjet. Because it helps them to fill their own coffers. Because there's some benefit, some tangible benefit. People have always sought out Jesus or said the name of Jesus because of some tangible benefit. All manner of individuals have been willing to say the name of Jesus, to bend the knee to Jesus, to wear the collar, to go into a building with stained glass and the like because they perceived something good would happen to them or for them if they did so.

What's your motivation for being here this morning?

That was going to be my last point. It's now my middle point.

What's your motivation for being here? If your motivation in coming to Christ, coming to church, coming to Jesus, is out of worship and love and adoration, then I've got good news for you. You're in good shape. But there are so many who pursue matters of faith because they see tangible benefits. I'll have friends. I'll be accepted. There's a place to go. There's this benefit. There's any number of worldly, temporal positives that I can extract from this, and I hope Jesus is an insurance policy against the time when I finally die, but some people don't see it as any more than that. Now, how do we know that to be true? Well, what does Matthew 7 say? In Matthew 7, you hear the most difficult words in the entirety of scripture. Jesus says, "Look, on the day to come, many are going to come to me, and they're going to say, 'Lord, Lord, didn't I go to church? Wasn't I an elder? Wasn't I a deacon? Didn't I do this for you? Didn't I do that for you?'" All manner of people are going to come to him. They're going to say, "Lord, Lord," which in Hebrew, the repetition means intimacy. "Lord, Lord, didn't I do this? Didn't I do that for you? You know all the things I did. You know how much money I gave to that building project. You know the things in which I tried to do positive deeds in the community and the like. You know all the stuff I did, right?" And what does Matthew 7 say? Jesus looks at many of those who come to him on that day saying, "Lord, Lord," and says, "Hey, hey, hey. Here's the deal. I never knew you. I never knew you in the singular means by which I need to know you, and that is through saving faith. If you come to me because of some benefit, if you serve the church because of some benefit, if you do all manner of things because of something you're going to extract from that relationship, if you approach my throne for all these benefits, even heaven itself because you want to go to a great and glorious place when you die, if that's the main reason why we're compadres, that's not enough."

Jesus says, "Many will come to me on that day and say, 'Lord, Lord, didn't I do these things?' And I will say to them, 'Depart from me. Depart from me,

for I never knew you.'" Motivations matter. Motivations matter, and this is what we see here. If you were just sitting in the room looking at these individuals, they all look like followers of Christ. They were not all followers of Christ. There was one right there, right in their midst, who was ready to betray him for 1/10 the cost of this perfume. Now, why does Jesus allow this? Well, you have to ask him. I don't know why goats and sheep have always commingled in this way, but it will not change. The New Testament records regularly talk about the New Testament church as one that has both goats and sheep, and even wolves. With that said, the question is, I can't be responsible for the motivation of every last person around me, but I can be responsible for my own motivation and for why I'm here this morning. If it's to worship and glorify my creator, then that's in line with what Mary did and with what the text as a whole has to say. All right, let's look at our last verses. Let's look at verses nine through 11. We're going to see some other interesting motivations here. Verse nine. "Now a great many of the Jews knew that he was there, and so they came." Remember, they follow this guy around. "They came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead." You think they were just curious? They want to see Lazarus? Well, look at verse 10. "But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also." Lazarus, poor Lazarus. "Because on account of him, many of the Jews went away and they believed in Jesus." Guilt by association. All right. Verses nine through 11, we see the mixed motivations just across the board. Unfortunately, the mixed motivations are shared by who?By the priests. Dear heavens, if there's anyone in that day and age who you would have hoped would have gotten with the program, who would have been known, who to look for, what Messiah would be, what he would do, that would bend the knee to him the minute he showed up, you would have thought it would've been the priests. Why? Because they were the ones most studied in these things. The priests had given their lives, their years to the study of this. However, just like Eli, the priest, centuries and centuries earlier, and just like so many of the priests, they saw their job and their vocation, and even this, as a means to a temporal end. These priests did not see Jesus as a Messiah to be worshipped, but as a threat to be put down. And Lazarus, poor Lazarus, fell into the same camp. Why? Because people saw Lazarus alive, and then they looked to Jesus, the one who had raised him, and they said, "We certainly need to deal with Jesus, but we also got to deal with this Lazarus guy, because if we don't take him out, people are going to look at him as a validation of him." And again, who's doing this? This is not the scallywags of the New Testament. I mean, they were, but that's not how they're identified. These are the guys in the tall, pointy hats. These are the pious people. These are the holy people. If you were a Jew, or if you're at 10,000 feet looking down at Israel, those guys, those chief priests, you would've assumed they're the holy ones. Why? Because they looked apart. And yet, what did Jesus say of such as these? He said, "Their hearts are open tomb." He said, "They're whitewashed sepulchers." They look it from the outside. It's like you go to a graveyard, you look at a tombstone, it might be all polished, marble, and the like. Underneath, it's bones. He says, "That's those priests. That's the Pharisees. That's such as these." So all sorts of individuals coming to Jesus, they're not coming to him with the proper motivations. People looking after Lazarus, again, not with the proper motivations. And if you're Lazarus, this has just been quite a week. I speculated a little bit last week as I was doing last week's study, what did Lazarus think when he comes back? What was going through Lazarus's mind? He's in glory, right? He's with the angelic choir, and then he comes back. What was his thoughts? We don't really know, but we know this, it was a big week for Lazarus, right? And then as this is a big week, and people are coming and saying, "Hey, it's him." Everyone's pointing their fingers, but some of them are not just pointing their fingers, but behind their back is a knife. Why? Because they want to kill you. This has been quite a week for Lazarus. As I look to wrap up here this morning, again, this passage is obviously not overtly Christmas themed in the sense of the incarnation, but it's easy to tie in. As I said before, on the first Christmas, on the very first Christmas, there was a man who wanted to find Jesus more than anyone else, anyone else on the globe at that time. His name was Herod, and his motivations were terrible because he saw Jesus the same way the priests, and the Pharisees, and the scribes, and the Sadducees, and all those guys would later. He saw Jesus as a threat, even as a child. Jesus always drew people to himself, whether it was Herod, whether it was the wise men who followed the star, whether it was the people who ran around Galilee, chased him down, 5,000 and more at a time in order to be fed and listen to him, and the like. People were always following Jesus. But again, their motivations. Their motivations were not pure. Next week, we're going to talk about the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Remember the hosannas and the palm branches? And you might be inclined to think that all those people laying down the palm branches all did it because they saw this Jesus as the savior to their sins, right? [imitates buzzer] The majority of those who laid down palm branches were chanting what five days later? "Crucify him." Motivations matter. Let me just wrap it up this way. Motivations matter. Throughout the New Testament, we see that. Throughout the Old Testament, we see this. Throughout the churches, we see this. Motivations matter. Why do we come to Jesus? Why are we following Jesus? When you peer into the manger this Christmas time, in your mind's eye, when you peer into that manger, what do you see there? Do you just see a charming baby? Do you see a future leader, a future rabbi, future teacher, future great man? I'm sure he was all those things, but none of those things will save you. The singular basis, the singular relationship you're called to have with this child is not as a rabbi, a leader, a teacher, a miracle worker, any of these things, but rather as a savior from your sins. You have a problem. The problem is that you're a sinner, and you've broken the laws of one who's greater than you. And this one has said that the wages of a single sin, singular, is death. The wages of sin is death. Why is that problematic? It's problematic because if you and I are being honest with ourselves this morning, we've sinned more times than we can count. We have broken the laws of a thrice holy God more times than we can possibly count. And the question for you this morning is this: what are you going to do about it? You've broken the laws of a thrice holy God more times this week than you can count, let alone across the course of your lifetime. What are you going to do about it? Well, God has told us

there's nothing you can do. That's the problem. There's nothing you and I can do. You cannot offset those bad deeds with good deeds. You cannot offset spiritual sins with temporal works. You can help old ladies across the street for the next 10 million years, and it will not be sufficient to offset a single transgression. The wages of sin is death. You're a sinner. What are you going to do about it? Again, you can do nothing, but that brings us to the solution. That brings us to chapter 12. This brings us to the whole of the gospel itself. The solution is this, that God has looked down upon you in your fallen state, in your fallen condition, and he says, "I know you can't reach me. I know you can't reach my golden shores. I know you can't do it. I know that you could string together works after works after works like a ladder trying to climb to heaven, and I know you'll never make it. And because of that, I'm going to do the thing you can't do. I'm going to send my Son. I'm going to send my Son down to live the life that you should've lived, and then to die the death that you absolutely deserve to die." On Calvary, Jesus, this one, just a couple of chapters later, after chapter 12, we're going to see he's going to go to the cross willingly of his own volition. And when he's there, God's wrath for your sins is going to be laid upon him, and he's going to die. But before he dies, he's going to say three words. What are those words? "It is finished." It's done. It's complete. What does that mean? What's done? What's finished?

Payment. A man has sinned, a man must die. God is just. You and I deserve death. He cannot take our sins and sweep them into the coat closet of heaven. That's not the way it works. He must, if he's just, pour out his wrath against us. The good news for us at Christmas time, the good news for us at Easter, the good news for us this July, August, what have you, the good news for us every waking moment of our lives is this, that God looked down at our fallen state. He knew we could not save ourselves, and so he sent his own Son to die in our place. And when he was on the cross, two imputations happened. Number one, your sin was placed upon him as if he's the one who did it. Number two, his righteousness was granted to you as if you're the one who did it. Not only did he take your sin, which is amazing enough as it is, and then the punishment that your sin deserved, which was death, which is what he did on the cross, but at the same time, he imputes to you his righteousness as if you're the one who did all these righteous things. And because of that, this morning, when God the Father looks down upon you, what does he see? He sees you as a son or as a daughter who's been forgiven and who is now clad in the white robe of his own Son's righteousness. If you come to Jesus this Christmas, come to him on those terms. Come to him as the savior, not just of mankind, not just of the church corporally, but of you personally. Say, "This one, he died in my place that I might live, and so I will pour out that which is most precious to myself, even if it includes my very life. I will pour it out to exalt and to glorify him." Let's pray.

[gentle instrumental music] To search through an archive of Dr. Holt's previous sermons, please visit us at fpcgulfport.org, or you can look us up at sermonaudio.com. [music fades]