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Sermon by Kenny Foster, Associate Pastor, from Exodus 30:22-31 & Mark 14:3-9. This Sunday is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP). In our second sermon in the series on Giving Gifts to the King, we see that generosity to Jesus can lead to persecution, but Christ counts it as a beautiful thing. The scripture reading, through the example of the woman with the expensive perfume, is teaching us to do something beautiful to Jesus. It teaches us something about the motivation of our generosity. Our generosity is not for the Lord, but to the Lord. When generosity is to the Lord, we take care to prepare, we seek to obey, and we seek to promote Christ. And as we do this we can expect persecution. Like the woman in the story of anointing Jesus. She knew there was a cost. She didn’t care that it would draw criticism. And when your generosity draws persecution, what makes you continue? It has to be the beauty of the gospel, since she drew a commendation from Christ. Christ taking on our suffering, redeeming our pain, he turns it into a beautiful thing to him. Beauty begets beauty. That beautiful thing that Christ has done is the beauty the persecuted saint pursues as the motivation for the acts of generosity they seek to do to Jesus.