Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Chroma Church Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: I have a prophetic word for you this morning.
It's a word that the Lord gave me before our leaders gathering in September 2024 and we were looking together at the theme of abundance, which is what we've been talking about as a church over the last few weeks. So I felt prompted to share this word with you since we're all of this story of the abundance of heaven that the Lord is bringing into the body of Christ in this season of revival. And it's a prophetic word followed by just a little bit of a study of a passage, a story that the Lord highlighted to me in the context of this word. But this is the word the Lord said to me this it is hard for a rich nation to receive revival. To have all of me requires all of you. A poor nation is willing to give everything, the little that they have all in and I multiply it. A rich nation gives a little because it always wants to keep some back for itself. This word is not just about money. It's also about my favor and my anointing. What if I choose one person? Would you say, but what about me? Are you willing England, Europe, Enchroma, Church, family to give everything for my movement to sweep across your land? Or will you expect a little peace for yourself? Will you ask what's in it for me? It is hard for a rich person to enter. Hard but not impossible. Nothing is impossible with me. But will you enter? Will you pay the price which will be everything you have and value poured out, laid out to have me? I am the pearl of great price. You are rich when you have me. Many want my glory, but only a few are willing to pay the price. Will you be the one who is willing to spend it all for me? And if you want Bible references, if you're noting anything down, you can write down just to check this word out. Matthew 6, 1933 the treasure and the kingdom. Matthew 19:23 Rich entering the kingdom and Matthew 13:45-46, the pearl of great price. And I want you to turn your bibles to John 12.
This is the story we're going to look at today. And if you have a bookmark or one of those little things, you can also put a bookmark in Mark 14. We're going to go there as well, but we're going to start in John 12. Why don't you stand as we read the word of the Lord, the title, the anointing at Bethany.
Then six days before the Passover, Jesus came To Bethany, where Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead. There they made him a supper, and Martha served. But Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him. Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. But one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray him, said, why is this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? Then he said that not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the money box and he used to take what was put in it. But Jesus said, let her alone. She has kept this for the day of my burial.
For the poor you have with you always, but me you do not have always. This is the word of the Lord. Why don't you take a seat?
It's a beautiful story, isn't it? A beautiful story about Mary of Bethany, who anoints Jesus at his feet for his burial. And you may remember Mary is the sister of Martha. And there's a story about that Mary and Martha. And she's also the sister of Lazarus, it says here, whom Jesus raised from the dead. Now there is another story about anointing. You might remember the story in Luke 7 where the sinful woman comes to Jesus and also anoints him. Similarly, that's a different story because that's the story about woman coming and repentance, bringing her offering to Jesus. It's the story where Jesus says, she who is forgiven much, loves much. It's a story of mercy. This is a different story. It's the story of Mary of Bethany who anoints Jesus for burial. Two anointings. And this is the one I want to look at today. Sometimes I've talked about the other story in the context of sharing my testimony. But this is about anointing Jesus for burial. And it's the story that the Lord really highlighted to me with regards to this prophetic word. Because there is this picture in the story of the actions and the heart of Judas and the actions and the heart of Mary. And there's a Beautiful proverb. Proverbs 13:7 says this. There is one who makes himself rich yet has nothing, and one who makes himself poor yet has great riches. This is a picture of what's happening in the story and the story. And this proverb is a picture of the prophetic word that I've shared. That there's one who is running after money and ends up with nothing. And one who is pouring it all out at the feet of Jesus and ends up with great riches and favor in her life. You know, as we've been talking about kingdom abundance, one of the most important things we have to understand as God's kingdom people is that we do not pursue money.
We do not pursue money. Money pursues us as we pursue Jesus. That's at the heart of this passage. It's at the heart of the word I've shared. We do not pursue money. Money pursues us as we pursue Jesus. And so I just want to talk about that a little bit by looking at this story. And I want to contrast with you the story of Judas with the story of Mary.
And I want to ask you to come to this as we look at Judas with great humility, because, you know, none of us would want to ever be Judas in this story. We know that where that all ends, we know he's the betrayer. We know it's not good news, whereas that nobody wants to be Judas. Everybody wants to be Mary in this story and pour out the appropriate offering at the feet of Jesus. And yet what I want to say to you is that Judas was a disciple of Jesus first. He was one of the 12, and somehow he'd got here. And, you know, it actually says in the other accounts, Matthew and Mark of this story, that they all scolded her. It wasn't just Judas. Judas was the kind of ringleader. But they all struggled with what Mary was doing on that day. So. So there was something in all of their hearts that was troubled by this offering that she was bringing. And, you know, there may be a journey for us also. We know there's a journey as we talk about kingdom abundance. And so I want to ask you, as we talk about Judas, to come with humility and say, holy Spirit, if you have anything you want to say to me, you have permission. And I just want to pray for you now. I want to pray for us now, Lord. I pray. As we look at your word and we look at this whole topic of kingdom abundance, and we come before you and say, lord, we want to have right thinking about money, that you would speak Holy Spirit and Lord, you would speak to our hearts individually about anything you want to shift, move, or change. Lord, we open our hearts to you and we say, lord, we want to bring an offering like Mary brought.
And the people said, amen. Amen.
So in this story, I believe that Judas displays starkly all the actions of poverty and lack.
He's in trouble, isn't he? We can see that in the story. And the trouble is, money is an idol. Money has become an idol in his life. You know, Jesus said, you can't serve two masters. You can't serve money, mammon, and serve me. You love one and you hate the other. There's nothing in between. And that's what we see in this story. We see one at one end of spectrum and one at the other end of the spectrum. And honestly, we're either there or we're there. There's nothing in between. We either love money and don't love Jesus enough, or we love Jesus and money pursues us. Do you see? And that's the picture in this story. And Judas had money as an idol in his life. And, you know, in 1 Timothy 6, it says that money is at the root of all kinds of evil. And we see a great evil starting here that would end up in the betrayal of Jesus. Actually, in some of the other accounts, the way it's ordered, actually, the betrayal of Jesus comes directly after this story in Matthew's account. And he sells Jesus out, what, for 30 pieces of silver? In that, in this, in. In the sort of linear reading of scripture, you see this story. And then it's almost like, you know, the kind of stomping anger of Judas that he didn't get what he wanted. And he betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and mammon. The love of money had crept into his heart. And I want to talk about how that manifested in his life.
Because the first thing that we see in Judas in this story is that what he was saying is, I don't think this money should be spent on Jesus. I don't think Jesus is worth this amount of money. I mean, he uses different words, doesn't he? He says this should be spent on the poor. But that's just a deception. What he's really saying is, I don't think that Jesus is worth this.
And the other disciples were struggling with it, too.
And here's the thing I want to humbly say to you, that sometimes in the body of Christ, I hear this.
Sometimes in the body of Christ, I hear Christians saying this in a critical way. I don't think that money over there should be spent on that thing. You know, we don't have a problem with the oil, do we? Oh, yes, the oil. But what about if somebody spends an awful lot of money on a tent mission?
What about if somebody spends an awful lot of money on a crystal cathedral like we showed the other week, what about if someone spends an awful lot of money on some kind of crusade to the other side of the world. What about if somebody spends an awful lot of money on sound equipment?
You know, when the Lord spoke to us seven, seven, eight years ago about transformation of ministry, where Holy Spirit would be the pastor of this church, he spoke to us, we've said it a number of times about three things. He spoke to us about his presence. First, that we would be a people of his presence. Then he spoke to us about his salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ preached and the salvation of souls and with that healing.
And we understood those two things. But then he also spoke to us about, I want you to get your thinking about money right. And at the time we didn't fully understand it. And you know, Steve shared a bit last week with the declarations and how, you know, groundbreaking that was as we began to say these declarations but we didn't fully understand. It was like, it was almost like we got to the end of it. It's like, ah, why are you saying that? Jesus money. We've got to change our thinking. Why is that significant in what you want to do in our land? But I understand now, you see, because now this church with his presence in our midst and the epic salvation we've seen has over doubled in size and we can't always fit all the people in. We need more room, we need to buy this building, we need bigger premises.
And suddenly when you're talking about 1500 people, you're talking about millions of pounds. We've never had to talk about millions of pounds before. And if we don't have this building and we have to go somewhere else, we're talking about probably £10 million. It's a lot of money. It's a ridiculous amount of money. And you know, last year, as some of the pastors here were at the back of church, they realized that when it's full in here, if you were at the back of church, you couldn't see and you couldn't hear the gospel being preached, you couldn't see in here to worship the Lord. It was all muffled at the back. And we realized we've got to get new sound equipment, we've got to get new visuals and you know, it cost into the hundreds of thousands of pounds for secondhand equipment. And you might think, oh, that's ridiculous to spend that amount of money.
But friends, God is not poor and heaven is adorned with beauty and he is worthy of greatness. Now listen, I know things sometimes go wrong and I know there need to be checks and balances. But when we're talking about getting our thinking right about money, we need to realize that he is worth it. He is worth it. And if we ever find ourselves with that critical thing, I mean, you know, I've even thought it, what, £100,000 on sound equipment? But Jesus, you are worth it. And you know what? We're not even in to the story of acts where 3000 were converted. If we have 1500 in the, in this church, we are halfway there. What happens when we're in Acts? What happens when we're fully in revival and the churches across this nation need new buildings and the churches across this nation need new sound equipment and we're doing missions to the ends of the earth. It's going to cost an extraordinary amount of money and we just need to have our thinking right and say, yes and amen, Jesus, you are worth it.
But Judas didn't. And he was partnering with poverty and lack and an idolatry of money. Second thing, he was stealing. He was stealing from God. He was withholding. He was taking money back, keeping a little peace for himself. And we would say, I would never want to steal from God. Gosh, what a terrible thing.
But you know the thing, and this is a hard thing to say, friends, this is a hard thing to say, but the Lord really, as I was preparing for this, prompted me to say this to you. You know, when we withhold our tithe, which is a 10% of all we have, when we withhold our tithe from the Lord, we are stealing from God.
I know that's such a harsh, hard thing to say, but it is true, you know. You know, sometimes we say, we say our tithe is our giving. You know, the 10% that we give as our tithe, it's not our giving. It already belongs to the Lord. It's already his. And when we withhold it, the Bible tells us that we're actually stealing from God. This is the word of the Lord. If you don't believe me, read Malachi 3, where the Prophet has to go to the people and tell the people, would you rob God? You are withholding your tithes. Now, friends, I know we love to hear the good news.
I know that we love to hear the great news, that we are covered by the blood of Christ, that it's all about his grace and his mercy. But that does not mean the word of God is not true. Jesus said, I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets.
Jesus said, I've come to fulfill it through and it would be the perfect.
The perfect coming upon us and within us. The Holy Spirit writing the letter of the law on our hearts so that we would be in tune with the word of God not living in. Oh, it doesn't matter. Not in some kind of cheap version of grace.
My friends, I want to tell you, if you withhold your tithe, the 10% of all you have that belongs to God, we are stealing from God, our offerings and our giving is on top. And the Lord said to me of Judas, he said, this sin, this stealing was like the sin of action. And some of you might remember, some of you may not. You might have to go there. Joshua 7, where Joshua led the people into the promised land and they. They conquered Jericho. But the Lord had said that your. That as you go in, you must not take any of the produce of the land. The gold, the silver, the devoted things. These are to be devoted to the Lord. They were to come into the house of God. They were idolatrous. They weren't to touch them.
And there was one action who kept a little piece for himself because he just wanted a little bit of gold and silver to keep for himself.
And then they go into another battle and they're defeated. And Joshua's like, why, Lord? Why? And he says, because there's sin in the camp, and they have to seek out action. And on that day, him and his whole family die. It's such a tragic story. And you're like, wow, this is really hard stuff to hear, Juliet. But friends, I want to tell you this stuff because I love you, because I want you to receive the blessings of the Lord. You know, we never, ever want to give the devil a foothold in our lives. To give to God is a pathway to blessing, to live in the abundance of God, to withhold our tithes and our offerings. To save, steal from God is to partner with poverty. And the one who steals is a liar and a destroyer. And he wants to destroy our lives. And I'll tell you what he also wants. He wants to stop revival.
He wants to stop it.
And if we want to keep moving on this pathway into the promised land that we're on to go from one thing to the next. His presence, his salvation, and the abundance of. Of God. A changed thinking about our money. We need to go all the way in.
And the Lord will bless us. He will. And I tell you, the Lord is giving us, as a church, a blueprint for revival. And we're getting there. We're walking. We're walking. We're doing all of the things he said. But he said to me this morning, you know, that the Lord, his presence is his part. We just. He. We receive it. His salvation is his part. We just receive it. But changing our thinking on money is the thing that we have to do.
And the thing is, just as with action, what one person does affects the whole.
So too with Mary, what one does affects the whole. And if we cry, my church can get our thinking right and have our hearts right with regards to money, we will see more than we're seeing today. And this is not just about money and blessing. This is about miracles and salvations and revival. Will you say yes to God? Will you bring the whole tithe into the storehouse? And the third thing, Judas. The third thing with Judas is that he was lying and deceiving.
He was lying and deceiving. He was saying this money should be spent on the poor. He didn't mean that. He didn't care about the poor. It was just a deception. You understand? He wanted to steal from God. He wanted a little peace for himself.
This money should be spent on the poor. Listen, friends, I also want to say to you humbly, I have heard this said in the body of Christ.
I have heard Christians saying, I don't want to bring my tithe to the church because I think it could be spent on better things. It could be spent on the poor.
Do you know? It's a deception. It's not about what the money's spent on. It's about doing what's in the book and seeing the blessing of God flow in our lives.
And I hear this phrase a lot. And, you know, I want to tell you a story of hearing something like this with regards to somebody that's in our church. Who's Richard Gamble? Some of you will know Richard Gamble. He's building the wall of it at the eternal wall of answered prayer. And it's a great architecture that's going to go up in Coventry. And on every brick, there will be an answered prayer, a testimony of the glory of Jesus. And it's a beautiful, beautiful adventure with God, vision that they've had. And it's not just him. It's his whole family that have paid the price to see this vision from God come about and a lot of other people that are involved. But at every part of the story, there have been seasons of breakthrough in times of great sacrifice and prayer and challenges. And we've walked it out with them. And I remember there was one time where I can't remember what it was, whether it was planning or the bit or what it was. Exactly. But as he was walking this out, there were a whole bunch of Christians that were saying this shouldn't happen. And, you know, one of the primary things they were saying is this is too much money. This money should be spent on the poor.
And there was a particular theologian who was writing very publicly about this. Now, I don't want to say that what was on his heart is the same as what was in Judas heart. This is not a judgment of him. Forget about him. I'm just saying it's the same thing.
To think that God does not have enough money for something that will bring him great glory and the poor is to misunderstand the nature and the character of God. God is not poor. And Jesus said. Jesus said to this woman, of this woman, he said, you will always have the poor, but you will not always have me. Meaning the worship and glorification of Jesus comes first. But do you understand that the two are intertwined? Jesus loved the poor. And when he came to the Pharisees and rebuked them, and he said, you give a tenth of your mint and you'll ruin your deal. But you have neglected, neglected the more important matters of justice and mercy. He was saying, both are important. You worship me with your tithes and your offerings, and you also take care of the poor. But do you understand that when we bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, there is plenty to take care of the poor? And do you understand as well that when we worship Jesus in the way that Mary did on that day, we cannot help but take care of the poor? The first Christians, the Christians of Pentecost, what was said about them, they take care of the poor. It's absolutely intertwined with the worship of Jesus. But we worship him first. And when Judas said this phrase, he was lying. He just didn't want to give to God.
And so these three things, I come before you humbly and say, if you ever touch the edge of these things, just repent and turn around and come in to kingdom abundance. And that's what Mary did on that day. Mary brings an offering at the feet of Jesus.
And it's an outrageous, beautiful, prophetic offering. And I just want to read to you very quickly from Mark's Gospel, because you see in John's Gospel, he kind of. There's a real picture of Judas. But in Mark and Matthew, we see a bit more of what Mary did on that day. And so this is Mark 14. I'm going to read it to you again. Says, and while he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the Leper. As he was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly. And she broke the flask and she poured it over his head.
Notice this one is the head and the other was the feet. It was head to feet. It was all over him. There were some who said to themselves, some not just Judas, some who said to themselves indignantly, why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they scolded her. But Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you will always have the poor with you. And whenever you want you can do good for them, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.
Mary is the picture of what it means to bring it all to the feet of Jesus. Mary is the picture of the appropriate offerings we should bring to Jesus, not just in our giving, but in our life lived. And her offering was outrageous.
You know, I think it's, I think it's NT Wright who writes in his for Everyone series that what she did, if you contextualize what she did on that day, it would be like a woman coming into a very formal dinner with all the men, sort of in black tie, a men's only dinner, hitching up her skirts and dancing, doing the can can on the table. It was that outrageous. It was that. Not done. Now it wasn't that she did that, you understand, she did a beautiful thing. But my point is what she did was utterly outrageous. And she broke all of the boundaries of the day with her offering. And they didn't like it. It offended them so much.
And you know, we might look at this story and think, I want to bring that sort of offering to Jesus. But you know, this is about a life lived in devotion to Jesus. You remember I said that there was another story, Luke 7, where the woman anoints Jesus at the feet of Jesus and it's she who is forgiven much, loves much. And then there's this story. Well, many of the theologians and studies will tell you that these are two different stories. And I've always believed that because I've always thought, well, you know, lots of people come to Jesus in similar ways. I see that it would be unusual that women are bringing the tradition of the anointing of the special guest, the rabbi. That is a little bit unusual. But I understand that many people come and do the same things at the feet of Jesus. So I've always thought two different stories. But actually, as I was studying this in the context of this Word, I think the Holy Spirit just showed me something. But I'm not going to say it's definitely the word of the Lord.
But I just thought to myself, you know, what if it was the same woman?
What if Mary of Bethany was at the start of her journey with Jesus, the sinful woman who came to the feet of Jesus and she began at his feet pouring out this offering and then it was Mary at the end of Jesus life who does the very same thing. My point is this is a life of devotion where she knew exactly what he needed at the time. And she didn't even think about the offense it would cause in the room because she was so in love with Jesus. And she just brought it, she just brought it and it was outrageous.
And you know, it reminded me of when we were leading our church in Southend. Steve used to tell a story of we had all these new Christians and they were, number of them were recovering drug addicts and all sorts of messy stuff in their lives. And they, they had jobs, they were just getting jobs, but they were poor, they didn't have much money. And there was one girl in particular who used to come to the, into the worship and very often she would put her whole, her whole week's wages into the offering. All of it. She just pour, she always be crying and she just, just put it all in. You can have it all, Jesus. I give it all to you. And then on Monday morning she'd be knocking at Steve's door and saying, I haven't got any money for my rent. How am I going to pay my rent? I've got no money. And then he'd be having to help her to pay her rent. And it's like you haven't quite grasped this. We put a percentage in. But you know, the stories in the scriptures that get highlighted are the ones like this, you know, the widow's mite, the ones where they just come and they just pour it all out to Jesus and know exactly what he needs at the right time. This is what Jesus needs. This is the heart of kingdom abundance. This is the heart of living in worship and devotion to Jesus. And she doesn't care what everyone thinks.
And you know, it's the groundbreaking, offensive offering that we might bring.
It's the businessman who has lots of profits, and Instead of bringing £100,000 into the offering, he says, blow it all, we're going to bring a million. And all the shareholders and the, you know, everybody's upset. And he's like, we're going to do it.
It's the person who has three or four houses that says to his family, I'm going to write into my will that half or two, one, one of these houses, I'm going to give it into the kingdom.
And you're like, oh, gosh, that's, you know, outrageous. And the family are like, I don't know what you're doing, dad, why are we doing this? And it's that outrageous thing that affects everybody and offends everybody.
It's the woman or man in a relationship that says to their spouse, who doesn't want to bring even a tithe, we're going to give.
Who's willing to upset the other person and break down that barrier of offence in order to give. And you say, well, but we both need to agree and especially wives need to obey their husbands. We know that one, right?
Wives obey their husbands as to the Lord. Husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church, laid down his life and died for her.
Wives obey their husbands, but not when their husbands are not obeying the Lord. We obey the Lord first. We obey the Lord first. And, you know, if we have to break some things, if we have to unsettle some things and upset some things, this is what we're talking about here. It's the wild, crazy, outrageous, groundbreaking offering.
And it was beautiful.
Jesus said she did what she could and what she did was beautiful. And, you know, in some translations, instead of the word beautiful, it says good that she bought a good offering. And, you know, the translation of this phrase, Karlon Ergoth, which is the Greek, can be translated into lots of different words. It can be translated into good, which is what it means. It's a good tree, bears good fruit. It's the overflow. Beautiful, as in aesthetically pleasing. Very different to just bunging in our tithe, to not even thinking about it. It's the considered, thoughtful, prayerful, beautiful aesthetic. What can I do for you, Jesus? Offering brought to the feet of Jesus. And it's an offering that's fit for a king.
It's an offering that's fit for a king. Will we be a people who bring these kinds of offerings? Good, beautiful offerings that are fit for a king. And her offering was prophetic.
You understand that what she did was to participate in the greatest story ever told. When she brought this offering, she anointed him for burial. And many of the studies will tell you that she didn't know what she was doing. I wonder, I wonder because women would have heard all sorts of going ons in the corridors and there was something beginning to stir. But I do think that there was a prophetic something going off in Mary in this moment, that she knew she had to bring it at this time, in this way.
And she prophesied into the future what was about to happen. You know, our offerings are prophetic. Our tithes and our offerings enable the kingdom of God to advance.
You know, when we took up an offering for Chroma worship, it was quite a few years ago, we just spontaneously took up an offering and we wrote to some people that might want to invest. We had nothing. It was just a dream. We didn't really even have the musicians, they came later. It was just a dream. Where I think Joel was just saying, I feel the Lord has spoken to us about writing songs that Holy Spirit loves where he will ride in on a generation and we'll see revival. And that's all we had. We had a dream. But, you know, in that offering we raised £70,000 and there was one person alone who gave £50,000.
That's a lot of money, isn't it? To give to something that is a vision and a dream. There was nothing there.
Do you understand that? They prophesied in such a way that they enabled it to happen.
It actually came about because those people gave in to that offering. Our offerings are to be outrageous.
Our offerings are to be beautiful, worthy and fit for a king.
And our offerings are to prophesy this coming revival.
We may have our 10% and our offerings on top may not be a lot, we may not have much, but I tell you, if we get this right, the Lord will open the floodgates of heaven upon us. We will see so much more than we see today if we will move into this kingdom. Abundance. Because God loves this heart. He rides in his favour. Rides in. What does he say of her?
She'll be talked about forever.
How wonderful is that.
Cramer Church there's an invitation for us to really take a step in our thinking about money.
To bring the whole tithe in, to get rid of any thought or lie or deception that comes from a spirit of poverty that wants to keep us poor.
To move into extravagant, extraordinary, hilarious giving, to bring the appropriate offering for a king.
And to prophesy this coming revival.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Chroma Charge Podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Cromer Chat.
