Alabaster of Gratitude

Prophetic Grace Gospel Ministries International Inc. — Miracle Love Center

Sunday, November 5 & 19, 2023  ·  1:00 PM EST

Venue: 8005 Creekside Village, Clubhouse Drive, Glen Burnie, MD 21060

Ministering: Bishop Samson Amajene

Gratia 2023 — Theme: Alabaster of Gratitude

Introduction

What truly makes our world go round and different from the rest of humanity as Christians is the level of gratitude we show unto the Lord and to those whom the Lord has used to love, appreciate, and support us in our walk with the Lord. When we fail to thank and appreciate God for what He has done for us, it stops the flow of His mercy, grace, and favour on our lives and gives the enemy a foothold to cause confusion in our lives. We are expected by God to keep the flow of grace through thanksgiving, praises, adoration, and in giving towards His name for everything He has done, is doing, and will do for us.

Let us imagine how many seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, and years the Lord has honoured us with in our journey — especially this year. Our attitude of lack of gratitude will make us lose every grace He has bestowed on us. We should be cheerful, generous, and joyful because of what He has done for us. Gratitude will make us live longer. Alabaster of gratitude is the antidote for sadness, sorrow, discouragement, resentment, depression, inferiority complex, sickness, and oppression of the enemy.

Definition — Mark 14:3–9; John 11:2; 12:3–9

Alabaster is a precious perfume made from spikenard. It was a sweet-scented perfume ointment from a plant in India, carried over land to the Middle East. Bible scholars say it cost more than a year's wages — that would have been thousands of dollars today. It was costly!

1. The Speed Bumps of Recreation and Entertainment

Luke 7:36 — And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meat.

Life will be so boring when it is only spent working and working with no room for play, recreation, and entertainment. We should make deliberate efforts in our journey to create speed bumps to slow us down, otherwise we might be heading for a nervous breakdown that may cost us more to maintain. Here in this passage, we see the Lord Jesus Christ making a deliberate effort to be a guest at Simon's house — though a Pharisee — to wine and dine with the aim of saving a soul from going to hellfire. We should deliberately turn our weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and burial ceremonies into Gospel events that draw souls to Christ for repentance. God often meets His people in unprecedented places in the Scriptures, and today.

2. Mary and Her Alabaster Box of Gratitude

Luke 7:37–38 — And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

Mary picked up an alabaster jar filled with nearly a litre of extremely rare and costly perfume — the purest extract of spikenard — and she anointed Jesus' feet. Then she wiped them dry with her long hair. This was Mary's "first fruits" in a way. She did not bring the least; she brought her absolute best and most expensive item to pour over a more than worthy Saviour, Jesus Christ. She believed Jesus; she anointed Him even before His death and burial. The Alabaster Box can also symbolise giving God our best and our all.

She knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, and, having been converted from her wicked course of life by His preaching, she came and seized the moment to acknowledge her obligations to Him, having no opportunity of doing it in any other way than by washing His feet and anointing them with the sweet Alabaster ointment she brought with her for that purpose.

The big question we should be asking ourselves is: what are we doing for the Lord for all His goodness towards us since our birth, and especially for rolling away the burden of sin from us? — Psalm 103:1–3.

The way of sitting at table then was such that their feet were partly behind them. Now this woman did not look Christ in the face, but came behind Him, and did the part of a maidservant, whose office it was to wash the feet of the guests (1 Samuel 25:41) and to prepare the ointments.

She stood behind Him weeping — her eyes had been the inlets and outlets of sin, and now she makes them fountains of tears. Her face is now full of weeping, which perhaps used to be covered with paint. Her hair, now made a towel of, which before had been plaited and adorned. We have reason to think that she had before sorrowed for sin, but now that she had an opportunity of coming into the presence of Christ, the wound bled afresh, and her sorrow was renewed.

Contriteness of heart is what the Father is seeking from us, because all our righteousness is as filthy rags before Him. For some of us, our hearts are no longer soft but hardened. May God help us — Ezekiel 36:25–26.

3. Total Submission in Humility

Luke 7:38 — And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

She washed His feet, in token of her ready submission to the meanest office in which she might do Him honour. Nay, she washed them with her tears — tears of joy; she was in transport to find herself so near her Saviour, whom her soul loved. She kissed His feet, as one unworthy of the kisses of His mouth, which the spouse coveted — Song of Solomon 1:2.

4. Mary's Deep Affection for Christ

Luke 7:38 — And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

It was a kiss of adoration as well as affection and deep connection to the Lord. She wiped them with her hair, as one entirely devoted to His honour. Her eyes shall yield water to wash them, and her hair be a towel to wipe them, and she anointed His feet with the ointment, owning Him hereby to be the Messiah, the Anointed. She anointed His feet in token of her consent to God's design in anointing His head with the oil of gladness. Note: all true penitents have a dear love to the Lord Jesus.

5. Mercy, Grace, and Favour Cause Offences and Jealousy

Luke 7:39–46

There are so many things in our lives that cause offences and jealousy from people, and one of the greatest causes of jealousy is when God starts blessing and lifting you to a new status of life — the people you never expected to attack you will suddenly attack you for no cause. And when you see people attack you like that, it only shows that your life is making progress.

Simon said within himself (little thinking that Christ knew what he thought): "This man, if he were a prophet, would then have so much knowledge as to perceive that this woman is a sinner, is a Gentile, is a woman of ill fame, and so much sanctity as therefore not to suffer her to come so near him." See how apt proud and narrow souls are to think that others should be as haughty and censorious as themselves.

Simon, if she had touched him, would have said, "Stand by thyself, come not near me, for I am holier than thou" — Isaiah 65:5 — and he thought Christ should say so too.

6. Justified, Discharged, and Acquitted

Luke 7:47–50

Now Christ, in His answer to the Pharisee, reasons thus: it is true this woman has been a sinner — He knows it — but she is a pardoned sinner, which supposes her to be a penitent sinner. What she did to Him was an expression of her great love to her Saviour, by whom her sins were forgiven. If she was pardoned, who had been so great a sinner, it might reasonably be expected that she should love her Saviour more than others and should give greater proofs of it than others; and if this was the fruit of her love, and flowing from a sense of the pardon of her sin, it became Him to accept of it, and it ill became the Pharisee to be offended at it.

Now Christ has a further intention in this. The Pharisee doubted whether He was a prophet or no — nay, he did in effect deny it — but Christ shows that He was more than a prophet, for He is one that has power on earth to forgive sins, and to whom are due the affections and thankful acknowledgements of penitent pardoned sinners.