The Gospel of John - Outline Part 29 - Exposing the Heart

TITLE

John 12:1-11 – Exposing the Heart

EXPLANATION

The week before His final Passover, Jesus went to Bethany again, to the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary.  They had dinner together.  In the midst of the dinner, Mary took some expensive perfume, anointed Jesus’s feet with it, and wiped His feet with her hair.  Judas Iscariot, who was in charge of the money for Jesus’s ministry, and who used to steal from the money bag, grew angry at Mary.  He cared nothing for her desire to minister to Jesus.  Rather, he was focused on the material gain he could have gotten from the perfume.  So, he criticized Mary’s actions and covered his own evil heart by claiming to have wanted to take care of the poor with money from the sales of the perfume.  Jesus rebuked Judas and protected Mary from his anger.  He stated that the disciples would always have the poor with them, but they would not always have Him. 

When the people learned that Jesus was in Bethany, many of them came to see both Him and Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead.  As a result, the chief priests decided that Lazarus needed to die as well, because they saw him as an accomplice to Jesus’s ministry and part of the reason people were believing in Him.

APPLICATION

Pressure always reveals the heart of man.  Turmoil and difficulty are where people’s true character comes out.  The veneer of civility is sometimes stripped away and what a person really thinks and feels becomes visible.  This is what happened here with Judas.  He had probably been covering his wicked heart for some time.  It is possible that he followed Jesus in hopes of attaching himself to a military type of Messiah who would sweep the Romans away.  But, when Jesus continued to talk about sacrifice and death Judas may have decided he did not want anything to do with that.  And now, with the opportunity for monetary gain draining away onto Jesus’s feet, Judas could not contain himself any longer, and his sinfulness burst forth.

As Christians, are we guilty of putting on masks?  Do we “perform” for our fellow church goers by doing the cultural things that we have learned will make us look acceptable?  Is all of this just a facade that is covering “private” sins that rise up when we leave the church building?  Let us pray that we will not be hypocrites.  Let us instead strive to be authentic and love God and His Christ with all of our hearts.