How do our desires shape our choices and our eternal destiny? In this week’s episode, J. Mark Horst teaches from Mark 14:1-16, illustrating the relationship between desire and destiny. He contrasts the religious leaders’ desire to maintain their power with Mary’s wholehearted devotion to Jesus. He challenges us to look inward and see what our desires reveal about our hearts and the paths we choose.
Thank you for being there and looking into the Word of God with us. The timeless, unchanging Word of God- think about the many people down through the ages who have studied these same stories. It is amazing and very humbling to think about.
Today we continue our study in Mark. If you can, turn to Mark 14. Our title is Desire and Destiny, and we will look at verses 1-16. We will divide the teaching into two sections. Today we will look at the first two examples of desire and destiny from this passage, and then next time we will look at the last two.
J Mark is here to teach today’s lesson. As he reads these verses, see if you notice the four examples of desire and how they affected their destiny. I will give you a hint: two are good desires, and the other two are not.
Human desire is a powerful, motivating force for good or evil. If you want something strongly enough, you’ll find a way to get it, to pay the price. Proverbs 13:19 says, “A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul.” All of us know the truth of that statement.
God created you and me with desires for food, companionship, intimacy, acceptance, and many other things. These desires are good because God doesn’t make anything bad. Sin comes when we take a natural desire, longing, or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God. Not only is it a sin, but a perverse distortion of the image of God in us. All these good things, and all our security, are found only and completely in him.
How we deal with our desires can set in motion consequences that change our lives today and affect our eternal destiny. Desire and destiny are closely linked.
In our study of Mark chapter 14, we’ll observe and contrast the desires of several people, and examine the destiny those desires produce. I’ve titled our study “Desire and Destiny.” The text will reinforce the linkage between them. So, listen carefully as I read Mark 14:1-16.
2 After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take Him by trickery and put Him to death.
2 But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar of the people.”
3 And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head.
4 But some were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted?
5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply.
6 But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me.
7 For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always.
8 She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial.
9 Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Him to them.
11 And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. So he sought how he might conveniently betray Him.
12 Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?”
13 And He sent out two of His disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him.
14 Wherever he goes in, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with My disciples?”’
15 Then he will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared; there make ready for us.”
16 So His disciples went out, and came into the city, and found it just as He had said to them; and they prepared the Passover.
Our text provides several ILLUSTRATIONS of the relationship between desire and destiny. These illustrations will help us examine our desires and the destiny they lead to.
The First ILLUSTRATION is,
The Desire of the Leaders
Our text notes that the feast of Unleavened Bread, called Passover, was drawing near. The Passover was celebrated on the first day of the 8 days of Unleavened Bread, and the terms were often used interchangeably. This feast in Israel’s religious calendar was obligatory for men and women. So, Jerusalem was jammed with pilgrims.
The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to kill Jesus. Their hatred of Him had grown from almost the beginning of His ministry. Mark chapter 3 records the healing of the man with the withered hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath day! Following that miracle, verse 6 records, “The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”
When someone has such a deeply rooted hatred toward another person and a desire to destroy them, we ask, “What’s the reason?” Though these men were supposedly the leaders of Israel’s spiritual life, many of them were morally and spiritually bankrupt. They cared more about maintaining their position than defending the truth.
Their grip on power, status, and wealth depended on their submission to Rome. Jesus pointed out the hypocrisy of their attention to the law’s smallest details while ignoring its true intent. They knew they could not peacefully coexist with Him. When Jesus’ ministry drew huge crowds, they became jealous. When Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph just a few days before Passover, Luke records that these leaders sullenly declared, “You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!”
The leaders wanted to maintain their position of power and influence. They would accept no opposition, even if it meant putting an innocent man to death, the Son of God, no less. However, their intense desire brought an inescapable destiny, as Jesus warned in Luke 9:24-25. “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?”
Do you know any religious leaders who sacrifice truth to maintain their position today? I know people whose reputations have been unjustly “crucified” to protect the reputations of leaders hiding sin, both personally and within their leadership team. Other leaders have used slander and false accusations to defame character and divide congregations and even families, all in the attempt to preserve the appearance of godliness.
But it will not stand. Like these men in our text, they may preserve their position and power for now, but ultimately, God will bring judgment. I want to avoid such people’s destiny at all costs, and I hope you do too.
As the religious leaders continued seeking a way to kill Jesus, their desire would seal their destiny. This also starkly contrasts with the following example of desire and destiny.
The Second ILLUSTRATION (of desire and destiny) is,
The Devotion of Mary
What a dramatic change in the narrative! From the scheming treachery of the religious leaders to an act of pure and lavish devotion. Interestingly, this appears to be a “flashback” to the previous Sabbath, recorded in John 12. There, as Jesus reclined at the table, this woman entered the house (John tells us it was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus), broke the seal on a flask of costly perfume, and poured the contents over Jesus’ head.
If this were Mary, this may have been an act of thanksgiving to Jesus for raising her brother Lazarus from the dead. Anointing a guest’s head was a common way to honor someone at a festive occasion. Typically, you use perfume or cologne sparingly, but she emptied the bottle. We know today that nard, also called spikenard, is a spice taken from a plant that grows in the high Himalayan areas of India, Nepal, and China.
Isn’t it interesting how someone’s extreme devotion to God often makes us uncomfortable and critical? So, the disciples are indignant and angry, huffing and puffing in their self-righteousness! “Why was this perfume wasted? It could have been sold for more than 300 denarii, and the proceeds given to the poor!” They scolded her harshly. Are we to believe that these men, who not long before this were jockeying for power, are now suddenly concerned about the poor?
With their complaints, the disciples were demeaning Jesus. Mary was the one who grasped his real and incomparable worth. She was the first to realize that the gospel fully implies suffering. The other women in the resurrection story wanted to do something similar and anoint Jesus’ body, but they were too late, since Jesus had already risen from the dead.
Mary’s lavish gift was the equivalent of a year’s wages. Would you be willing to give a year’s pay to honor Jesus? Jesus commended her. He rebuked the disciples: “Stop bothering her; why are you causing her trouble? She has performed a good and beautiful thing for me. You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me with you.”
Jesus explained that what she had done was within her power. She had the foresight and compassion to anoint His body for burial even before His crucifixion. None of those who criticized her had done anything like this. They still refused to grasp the fact that Jesus would suffer and die.
Mary’s desire to worship Jesus impacted her destiny. Jesus promised that this selfless act of devotion would be memorialized in Scripture for all time. The early preacher John Chrysostom praised her, saying, “The simple, beautiful act of a guileless Judean woman is even now being remembered the world over.” Once again, we see how Jesus honored women. They made up such a vital part of the gospel story. In the ancient world, women generally held a low position. Jesus changed that forever.
In the next illustration, we’ll see a dramatic contrast between Mary’s desire and destiny and Judas’s choices. But that will need to wait until next time.
Today we looked at the leaders’ desires and Mary’s desire. What a contrast! I don’t think we could see anything more opposite. I found it interesting how we are doing exactly what verse 9 says will be done. Isn’t Mary’s pure devotion and love challenging? God help us imitate her. Jesus so threatened the leaders, on the other hand, and they were doing all they could to eliminate him. Today there are still people like this; they are trying to eliminate all influence of Jesus and His followers. Two opposite desires that totally changed their destinies. How are your desires affecting your future?
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Thanks so much for joining us today. We must recognize how our desires affect our choices, and our choices have a huge impact on this life and the next – our destiny. So please consider carefully what you desire. If you can join us next time for part two of this lesson, be faithful until then.
