"Anointed for Burial"

So at OCC we started to do a 21 day fast. Fasting is a great thing! It helps us to set aside our carnal desires and allows us to focus more on God. Over the last few years, I have gotten out of the habit of fasting. Thank God for grace, because even though Fasting is NOT a commandment Jesus, or even a commandment in the old testament, I believe that its a good principle to help us draw closer to God.
As I have set aside time, praying, reading my bible more, asking God to reveal himself to me, God made me aware of a scripture in Matthew 26. Let me set the scene for you:

Jesus is in Jerusalem teaching. Days, maybe less than that, from this point is His brutal death on the Cross. As He is ministering, about 2 days before passover, a woman came in. While they ate, she began anoint Him with some expensive perfume. His disciples protested saying "That's Criminal!This could have been sold for a lot and the money handed out to the poor" (Matt. 26:9 The Msg). Jesus rebukes them and from that, I get a sense of where Jesus' heart is at. He says, "...She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives, but not me...what she really did was anoint me for burial. You can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she has done is going to be remembered and admired." (Matt. 26:14-15 The Msg).

What was interesting to me was what Jesus said about the woman. We don't really know who she is, we can assume she was making a HUGE sacrifice by giving this to Jesus. But the thing that strikes me is that Jesus says, in essence, that by making sacrifices like hers, giving a true up sacrifice, we will be well known and admired. When we sacrifice so much, we become a part of the legacy of Christians that have given everything for the glorification of the Son! Where does that tie in to fasting? What's the real point to this?

The real point that we need to understand if we are going to become people of God is that a sacrifice is not a sacrifice unless its a sacrifice. Then if it IS a sacrifice, Jesus says that we don't sacrifice in VAIN! Another verse says
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Mark 10:29-31


Selah!

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