Jesus Anointed at Bethany – John 12:1-9

The Story in a Nutshell

The story continues…

A few days before the Passover celebration, Jesus returned to Bethany.  Bethany is the town where Lazarus, Mary and Martha lived and Lazarus is the man that Jesus raised from the dead.

In honor of Jesus, a dinner was prepared.  After dinner Mary took a jar of expensive perfume, anointed Jesus feet, and then wiped his feet with her hair.

This bothered Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples.  Judas said, “That perfume was worth a lot of money.  It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.”  Now you need to know that Judas didn’t really care for the poor.  He was a thief who was in charge of the disciples’ funds and he frequently took some of the money for himself.

In response to Judas, Jesus said,” Leave Mary alone; she anointed me with oil in preparation for my burial.  You will always have the poor, but you will not always have me.”

When the people of Bethany and the surround area heard of Jesus’ arrival they flocked to see him and Lazarus who was raised from the dead.  But Jesus was not popular with the religious leaders.  Now, they not only wanted to kill Jesus, but Lazarus too, for it was because of Lazarus that many deserted the religious leaders and believed in Jesus.

To be continued…

What did you learn from the story?

If you want to gain a full understanding of the complete story, and for help in answering some of the questions below, you may want to have the following items as additional resources:  a Bible, a dictionary, and a Bible commentary on the Book of John (optional).

1. What is important about the town of Bethany?
2. What did Mary do for Jesus?
3. After dinner, what did Mary do?
4. Why did Mary anoint Jesus with precious perfume?
5. What did Judas think of Mary’s action?
6. Why was Judas upset with Mary’s action?
7. What did Jesus say to Judas?
8. When the people learned that Jesus had arrived in Bethany, what did they do?
9. Why did the people flock to see Jesus and Lazarus?
10. What did the religious leaders think of all this?
11. What was the plan of the religious leaders?    Why?
12. What did you learn about God, Jesus, and people from the story?

Have questions about God, Jesus, and the Bible? An excellent source for answers to your questions is gotquestions.org. Check it out. gotquestions.org.

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