“One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume.”
— Luke 7:36-37 (NLT)
The story of the woman with the alabaster jar of perfume starts with Simon (a Pharisee) inviting Jesus to his home for dinner. Jesus graciously accepts the invitation and when he arrives at Simon’s house, a woman is there waiting for him with a container of perfume ready to anoint his feet.
We know that this woman arrived at Simon’s house before Jesus as he says in verse 45 from the time he first came in she was with him. And she brought the jar of perfume with her. She came prepared to anoint his feet and got there early to make sure she didn’t miss out.
1.
Come prepared to worship
The first lesson I think we can learn from this text is that tried and tested, boy-scout approved moto “Be Prepared”. If we are to worship God fully, we need to come to him ready to worship. It isn’t just a “turn up to and see what happens” kinda thing. It is so important that we take the time to prepare ourselves in order that we are ready to seek God and to enter in to his presence.
This act of preparing ourselves before entering the presence of God is repeated throughout scripture. In Exodus 19, God called the people to prepare for God’s presence to come down upon Mount Sinai. In 1 Peter, we are called to prepare our minds and actions. In Matthew 5, we are told that before we offer our gift to God, if we remember that anyone has something against us, we must first “go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” It is essential that we have dealt with any unforgiveness, bitterness, contempt, anger, hatred in our own hearts first. Before we draw near to God, we must get ready to come near to him. We must prepare ourselves for an encounter with The King.
I think it’s important at this point to remind ourselves that we have no right to come into God’s presence on our own or because of anything we have done. No amount of preparation that we can do is enough to make us right with God. This process is not about becoming good enough in our own strength. We are not able to clean ourselves of the marks that are left by sin or purify our own heart of the mistakes that we have made. Only Jesus can do that through the price that he paid on the cross!
This preparation process is about giving our attitude a re-boot. It is about identifying and turning away from anything that could form a barrier to our worship in advance so we can truly find the freedom that comes with extravagant worship. Only Jesus can make us right with God. But only we can make the decision to deal with the mess that we have created. Only we can decide to turn away from the sin that caused that mess in the first place.
Over and over again God invites us to come near to him, come into his presence, but we must always remember that we are to regard Him as holy. We should approach God boldly, but we must also approach him with reverence (Hebrews 12:28). Our preparation for worship involves reminding ourselves of who God is—the holy, sovereign Lord, creator of the world, Lord over all – and acknowledging who we are – flawed and in desperate need of a Saviour.
Yet there is also a practical element of coming prepared which is reflected in the story of the woman with the Alabaster jar. She physically brought perfume along with her to give to God. Coming prepared also means to come prepared to give practically. This is an important part of worship that we often overlook.
Worship isn’t just about praising the name of Jesus. It is also about submitting all that we have, all that we are, to our creator. This may be our money (tithes and offerings), it may be our gifts and talents, it may be our energy and willingness to serve. At it’s best, it will be a combination of all of these things and more!
Preparing ourselves for worship is about fixing our eyes back on Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of [our] faith” (Hebrews 12:2), realigning our hearts, souls and minds with his (for more on this see “How to Love With All”) and submitting everything to our incredible God, because he is Lord over our lives. Romans 12:1 urges us to offer our whole bodies, all that we have, as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.
2.
Make worship a priority
The woman with the Alabaster jar arrived with her offering at the house before Jesus did and waited there for him. This woman did not want to miss out on the opportunity to worship Jesus so she made getting to Simon’s house a priority. We do not know when the woman heard that Jesus was going to eat at Simon’s house but what we do know is that there can’t have been much time between her hearing about it and leaving to greet him there. It is likely that she dropped whatever she was doing, gathered together what she needed and headed straight over.
There are so many things in our lives that are fighting for our attention and devotion; our jobs, husband, wife, children, Netflix, social media. Not one of these things are inherently bad. In fact many of these ‘distractions’ when enjoyed in a healthy balance can be great. The problem is it is so easy for any one of them to become more important, or more of a priority, than our relationship with God. Yet the first of the Ten Commandments is to have no other gods before Him and the second is to not make for ourselves any idol of any kind (Exodus 20:3).
A god or idol is anything we worship or put an excessive amount of ourselves into. How many of the things that take up our time, thoughts, money and attention have taken the place where God should be?
The key to a lifestyle of extravagant worship is keeping God in His rightful place in our priorities, letting him into every area of our day and making him first in our lives. We need to make a habit of allocating time to regular prayer, worship and reading His Word. And where we’ve allocated specific time, we need to be consistent and stick to it, arriving early so that we don’t miss out.
If we are always late or running out of time, we are not prioritising whatever it is that we are doing. If we are always tired in the morning and end up sleeping in, sacrificing our time with God, then we need to go to bed earlier the night before. If we are always running late for church because we have 101 things to do in the morning, then we need to either get up earlier to do the 101 things, or find ways of reducing it to 80 things by doing 21 of those things another time.
It’s not always easy. We don’t always get it right. And we know that there is no condemnation in Christ. But if we want to live a life of extravagant worship, a life that is firmly rooted in God’s word, we need to put God first. We need to come prepared and we need to prioritise.
Thank you God that You long for me to draw near to you in worship
Please help me to always come prepared to give, offering my whole being as a living sacrifice in worship to you.
You are the King of my heart. May I always put you first.
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