Holy Wednesday // Matthew 26:6-16

Join us as we walk through Matthew 26:6-16.

Transcript

Small-Town Youth Pastor Story

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Well, in college, I was actually the part-time youth pastor at a church called uh Community Baptist Church in Ferris, Texas, CBC, but it could not be any more different from the CBC here in San Antonio. Uh a little bit about Ferris, even though Ferris is close to Dallas, Ferris is country. Like that type of country. Uh like middle of nowhere, uh, cornfields. Uh, if it gives you an idea of the type of church, uh, there was probably about 30 to 40 people there any given Sunday. Uh, I think it was like us, and then the next youngest person was like Moses' distant cousin. Like it was, it was very interesting. It was a great church, man. People loved the Lord, they loved us well. Uh, but it was just a very different dynamic. And one day, uh, one of my students, who we'll call Katie for this illustration, came to me and uh she, I mean, here's the thing about Katie. Katie had a rough upbringing. She had a hard life. Uh, her mom was in and out of the home, in and out of jail. There were drugs in the home. Uh, the mom would actually steal money from her to go and buy drugs. And this was just a normal Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for this girl. Uh, but she also lived a very broken life, lots of bad decisions. I mean, this is a young, like eighth-grade freshman girl, and some of the stuff she's already seen and done just broke my heart. And I cared so much about her that it that it frustrated me that she would keep making these decisions. And one day she comes in and she's bragging about something dumb that she did, like, oh, hey Garrett, guess what? Like, I threw a beaker in science class and broke it and like got suspension or whatever. And, you know, this was long before I had kids, so I was nowhere near uh as patient and understanding of that stuff as I would like to be now. And it was just I got frustrated. I was like, Katie, like, why do you keep doing this type of stuff? Like, like, don't you care about your life? And so she responded, she kind of listened to me for a second, and she goes, Well, my my parents don't care about me, so why should I? And and I was heartbroken because I just got a glimpse into her heart. This at one level I was just really frustrated with her behavior, but I saw a brokenness there that because of her past, she had no sense of self-worth. She felt no valued, and because she didn't feel valued, she didn't value herself, and it led to a lot of bad and broken decisions. So why am I telling you that story tonight? Well, because many of you here in this room might have a very different background than Katie did, but you come in with some of the same questions and struggles when it comes to value. Maybe you don't feel seen or heard or loved in your family, in your school, on your sports team, uh among your friends, and and it takes a toll on you. And you wake up in the morning and wonder did anybody, will anybody see me today? Does anyone care? Does anyone love me? Do I matter? Well, because it's Easter week, we wanted to take a break from our Asking for a Friend series. So we'll pick that up next week with a panel. It'll be lots of fun. But this week we wanted to focus on the Passion Week, which is the week before Jesus' crucifixion. He comes into Jerusalem on Sunday, and then uh on Friday he's crucified. Sunday he rises from the grave. And on Wednesday, we actually see Jesus get betrayed by Judas. And so we're like, hey, it's Wednesday, let's focus on the text that talks about Wednesday. So we're gonna be in Matthew chapter 26, starting in verse six. So if you want to flip there, it'll be on the screen. Uh I'm gonna be reading out of the NIV, if you would like to match. And this text has a lot to do with that question of value, specifically how we value Jesus, how he values us, and how that should change everything. So, Matthew 26, starting in verse 6. While Jesus was in Bethany, in the home of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant, they were angry. Why this waste? They asked. This perfume could have been sold at a high price, and the money given to the poor. And aware of this, Jesus said to them, Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. And when she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her. So, like I said, this is the week of the crucifixion. This is Wednesday. So the day before, Jesus had spent a lot of time debating and arguing with the religious authorities, the Pharisees, who were very legalistic, who were corrupt, who were doing all sorts of jacked-up stuff, and they opposed Jesus because Jesus was a threat to their authority and their way of doing things. And so he's going back and forth, and Wednesday is this much more quiet day. We don't know a lot about Wednesday outside of this text, and it's probably filled with a lot of rest. And this account, they're having this meal at Simon the Leper's house, which leprosy is a really, really, really nasty disease where it basically just like skin and limbs and things just fall off. It's bad. And so we read this and we're like, well, he's probably not currently a leper because he would not be hosting a dinner party if his arm was falling off. So this must have been somebody that Jesus had healed, right? Somebody who had been a leper for a really long time and now is hosting Jesus in his home for a dinner. And all of a sudden, this woman comes and she pours all this perfume on Jesus' head, which you read that, you're like, what in the world is going on, right? Like who, what, when, where, why? Well, we know uh what, when, and where, but who is this lady? Well, we don't know for sure. Some people think it's Mary because there's a similar story in the Gospel of John, um, but there's also some differences with that story in John where that might have been something that happened earlier in the week. We're not going to go into all of those weeds, but for the intents of this talk, we we don't know who this woman is necessarily. Pretty much all that we do know is that she's got to be somebody who's probably been following Jesus for a little bit because of how she seems to be familiar with his teachings. Uh, and she's also at this dinner. The crowds aren't here. This is just his followers. And so Mark tells us this this perfume uh is crazy expensive. It's worth around 300 denari, which I know means nothing to any of us, but that's basically a year's worth of wages. Uh, you know, you try to put it into today's dollar, it can be anywhere from like$30,000 to$65,000. Um, but again, it's it's more about the fact that you would have to work for a year and not spend any of that money to be able to buy this perfume. And you could ask, well, was this lady like really, really wealthy? Probably not. We don't hear that. More likely, this is this woman's life savings. This is all she has. This is everything she put into this basket because she wanted to do that for Jesus. So then that makes you ask the question, well, why? Like, why in the world would this lady do that? Like what with perfume on her head? Like, I get doing something nice for Jesus, but why this? Well, there's a few different possible explanations. One is it was custom to anoint, which is put oil on a housed guest. It was a way of telling them that they were valued. It was this the symbol of honor. Uh, you know, you think of some of the ways that we honor guests, right? We shake their hand, we give them a hug, like like when somebody comes to your house, you do certain things to make them know they're welcome. Well, that was a way that they would do that in this culture. But the problem with that explanation, even though that was a part of it, is you normally didn't do it with like$60,000 perfume. Uh, it was normally something much smaller, it was just like a token or a gesture. So there's got to be more to it than just that. Another possible explanation was that in that culture, you would anoint kings, you would anoint prophets, you would anoint people who God had chosen to serve a special role. And we're right off Palm Sunday, and so Jesus had entered, they've been praising Hosanna. Hosanna, the Messiah, the king is here. Uh, and so maybe she's continuing that type of worship. And again, it's a part of it, but that still misses the biggest piece of why she did this. And we know that because Jesus actually tells us why. Uh, Jesus says, When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Because, see, in the Jewish customs, uh, when it came to burial, bodies were anointed with spices and perfumes after death. That was how they prepared the body, similar to how uh if somebody in today's world passes away, they go to a funeral home and the body is prepared for a funeral. That's why, you know, if you've seen someone afterwards, they don't look quite the same. Uh, it's because the body's been prepared. And so this was a way of preparing a body for a funeral. Except one weird thing, Jesus hasn't died yet. And so scholars debate how much she understood in that moment, but it seems like Jesus, he had been teaching about how he was gonna be betrayed, he was gonna be crucified, he's gonna be delivered over, and this lady's been listening uh that she took him at his word. She, she, oh, he's he's actually gonna die here in a few days. Like this is what all of this ministry has been building towards. And she believed him and she had faith. And so she wanted to do this to honor him, to prepare him for what was coming. She she did the only thing you can do when you take Jesus at his word, and that's to surrender everything. She listened, she believed, she had faith, and she gave him all that she had. Which the crazy thing is, out of everybody in that room, all the disciples, the ones you hear about, Peter, John, out of all of them, she's the only one who's actually like living in line with what's about to happen at the cross in a few days. Everybody else still missed it. And we see this big uh contrast because in the very next verse, we focus on a guy named Judas Iscariot. And so we're gonna jump into verse 14. Then one of the twelve, the one called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and asks, What are you willing to give to me if I deliver him over to you? And so they counted out for him 30 pieces of silver. And from then on, Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over. And so this is a really short passage about Judas. But how many of you have heard the name Judas before, right? Even if you're not super familiar with the Bible, uh, when somebody's a traitor, what do you normally call them? Judas, right? And that's because of this guy. This is that Judas. He was one of the 12 disciples, and he was trusted to hold the money bag. He was like the treasurer for the group because when Jesus would travel around with his disciples, they had to buy food. They didn't have a permanent place that they stayed. And so somebody was in charge of taking care of the money, making sure they had enough, making sure, oh, we can budget for this and that. Uh, but the thing is, the gospels also tell us that he was a thief, that he would take a little bit off the top of the money bag, that he was deceitful, that he would lie about it. Uh, in fact, a similar situation to this one happens earlier, where a woman comes and anoints Jesus, and Judas is the one to complain. He's like, we could have sold that and given it to the poor, but he didn't actually want to give it to the poor. He wanted it to go in the money bag so that he could take some. And a lot of scholars believe that's why the disciples respond the way they do here, is because they had bought into what Judas was telling them. And so you ask, like, how did Judas get there? Like, why did he even start following Jesus in the first place? Well, like many of the disciples, he probably believed that Jesus was going to be this political, like, worldly ruler because Israel was under control of Rome, which you've probably heard about in your history classes, and the Romans weren't really nice. Uh, they charged all these taxes, they uh wouldn't give you a lot of freedom, they give you enough freedom the way you felt free, but then they would stomp down when they wanted to. And they have been wanting to get rid of the Romans forever. And they in their minds thought that's what Jesus is going to do, especially when he walks into Jerusalem and people are praising him. He's like, man, we're about to run this thing. We're about to change the government, we're about to have a revolution, like the new king is here. And so Judas sees that and he wants in, right? Think about how when you know somebody uh has won the lottery, right? You hear these stories of someone wins the lottery and like all of a sudden everybody wants to be really close to that guy because it's like, man, that guy's got a lot of money. And maybe if he likes me, then he'll give me some of that money, right? You start to try and ride the coattails. And that's what Judas was doing. He was looking forward and saying, hey, I think this guy's about to take over. And so I want the power, I want the influence, I'm gonna do whatever I can to get close to him. But what happens is over time, Jesus makes it pretty clear that's not that's not how this whole thing is gonna go down. He starts to talk about how he's gonna be crucified, he's gonna be turned over, he's gonna be betrayed. Uh, he would argue with the religious authorities, he was rejected. And over time, Jesus would speak these convicting words about greed, about sin. And what I'd have to imagine happened is that would expose the sin in Judas's heart. And instead of repenting, he just grew more bitter and bitter and bitter at Jesus. Think about the times when uh maybe you've had a friend or someone who is doing something wrong and you're like, hey, I don't think we should do this. We need to do something else. And they respond like angry because they take it as like, oh, you think you're better than me, right? Like you, you think that you're holier than I am just because you don't want to cheat on this test, you don't want to do that with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Well, who do you think you are? Right. And so those starts of those uh emotions start to come up in Judas, and it gets to the point where he's so bitter and hateful towards Jesus that he sells them out for 30 pieces of silver. Right? He he takes money in exchange for letting the authorities know when they could catch Jesus away from the crowds, because if they tried to arrest him with the crowds, there'd be a riot and it would be bad. And that 30 pieces of silver, it wasn't like nothing. It was about four months of wages. It was a decent amount, but it wasn't life-changing. But what I think Matthew's actually trying to get across here is something different, because he's pulling on this thread that the original audience, the people who this was written to, would have actually recognized right away. It's a callback to Exodus 21, 32, where 30 pieces is the price of a slave. If a slave is accidentally killed and the Bible doesn't condone slavery, it was actually protecting slaves because they already existed before God gave this word to his people. Uh, but if a slave was killed, they were valued at 30 pieces of silver. That was the retribution that had to be made. And then in Zechariah 11, 12 through 13, a prophet is paid that amount for his services to Israel as an insult. Basically, they're saying, hey, we don't value as anything, we value as like a subhuman, uh subhuman, like we value you as a slave, like you're worth nothing to us, right? And not to say that that's how the Bible views slaves, but that's what the people intended that money to tell. And so that was their way of saying that's all you're worth to us, and God tells them to throw it back into the temple. And so when Judas betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, and then we didn't read this, but later on, when he feels regret and remorse, he actually goes and throws that silver back into the temple. That's what Jesus is pointing to, or that's what uh Matthew is pointing to in the Gospels. Judas and the chief priests were saying, Hey, Jesus, you're worth almost nothing to us. And that's the contrast. I know I've been talking and doing a lot of explaining, but it's to get us to this point. So if I lost you, come back. Matthew is putting these stories together on purpose because you have this woman and Judas, stories back to back, right? And you have this woman and Judas, and they both saw the same things. They were in the same room, they had followed the same Jesus, but how could they respond so differently? Well, on the one hand, the woman saw Jesus as worth everything. She she saw that, hey, I don't have much Jesus, but I'm gonna pour out my life savings to honor you because you are that worthy of praise. You are that valuable. And then you have Judas, who only sees Jesus as worth nothing. He's only as valuable as what he can give Judas. And the second it's not very much, he he cashes them in and he sells them out. And the truth that Matthew wants you to see in this gospel is that how you value Jesus will shape the rest of your life. It's the most important thing. Uh when I was in middle school, I was in a little bit of a rough spot in life. My parents got divorced when I was seven, which was a really, really bad time for that to happen because you're old enough to remember everything, but not old enough to process any of it. Uh, and we got in the middle of a lot of it, and then we went to a public school uh from a Christian charter school in sixth grade. So you can imagine how well that went. Uh, and I was pretty, you know, not the world's most social kid, so it didn't go well. And I was getting picked on and just like life was a mess. And a friend invited me to church and I heard the gospel and everything changed. Uh, the Lord gave me a peace, the Lord gave me a joy, he brought me out of that darkness. And a few years kind of went by and I and I started to get plugged in and this shift started to happen. Like I was thankful for what God had done in my life, but as I started to fall more and more into this sin and this trap and this lie of I started to fall in love with Jesus for what he could give me rather than who he was. And I would use Jesus to gain influence in the student ministry, right? To get pats on the back, to get people's approval, uh, to to um gain attention from girls that I liked, to gain approval from my parents or my teachers. Like, like it was this tool where if I did these things, then people liked it. I got a thumbs up. And when push came to shove and the teachings of Jesus came in the way of what I wanted to do, whether that was lust or comfort or distraction, I would sell him out. And it led to me, honestly, being a really bad person who would use my relationship with God or what I called my relationship with God, uh, to live a double life. And all the while I was full of shame and I would use Jesus to manipulate people around me just so I could get what I wanted. And I didn't realize it, but I only value Jesus for what he could do for me. And it took me somewhere I didn't want to go and turned me into a person I didn't want to be. And I learned that lesson the hard way. Praise God that he let me hit rock bottom in his graciousness, and I realized that and I repented, and God has healed me of that. But I looked back and I was like, man, how I value Jesus shaped me in a profound way. Uh, it's either good or it's really, really bad. And so as we move towards Easter this week, I'll close with this. I want to invite you to examine your own heart. Ask yourself that question. How do you value Jesus? Is he only as important to you as what he has to offer, as what he can give you? You know, when when you need a good grade on a test, to become a really, really solid prayer, when you need that spot on the team, or you've got a big game coming up, or you want that relationship, or even some of the harder things in life. You're facing loss, you're facing grief, or even some of the ways that in a town which praise God has a lot of churches and is very culturally Christian, how we can kind of use Jesus to climb the social ladder. I want to be in the popular Nuevo or Young Life or Bible study. I want to go to the camp that everybody else is going to because then I can post it on my Instagram. Right? It's sneaky how we'll just start to use Jesus for the clout or the stuff that he gives us. And if that's you, that's a warning sign of pride. Because what that mindset infers is that you are the most important person in your universe. That Jesus only matters until he gets in the way of what you really want to do. And when that happens, what you're saying, whether you realize it or not, is that hey, I'm more important than you, God. And I can say that because I've been there. I've walked down that way of life. And let me tell you, learn from me, there is no life there. There's nothing good to be found in that mindset and living that way. That's not the relationship that God is calling you to. God's calling you to have the mindset of the woman who understands who Jesus is, takes him at his word, and has faith and responds by saying, Jesus, I don't have much, but I give you everything. And the truth is, if you believe Jesus is who he says he is and did what he said he did, that's the only response you can have. Because we've talked a lot about how you value Jesus, but to truly value Jesus correctly, you have to understand how Jesus values you. Because two days later, after this scene, Judas would leave the Last Supper and he would come back with a crowd, with torches and swords, and Jesus wouldn't put up a fight. They would take Jesus away, they would beat him, mock him, spit on him, they would put him through sham trials, falsely accuse him, keep him up all night, not feed him anything. And then they would eventually condemn him to death on a cross, and they would torture him, they would beat him to where the scripture says you couldn't even realize he was a human. He was unrecognizable. And then when they were done with that, they got a massive piece of wood and gave it to him and said, carry it to that to that rock over there. All the while they jeered him, they beat him. He got so weak where he eventually would fall, and somebody would help him to carry that the rest of the way. And then when he finally got to that place called the skull, they would lay him on that cross beam, they would stick his hands out, and they would drive nails through his wrists, right where the nerves were to be as painful as possible, through his ankles. And they would jam that cross in the ground to where he would jam down and it would hurt where the nails were, and to the point where how they designed this, they were very mechanical in how they created this way to crucify and execute someone, is you would literally have to pick yourself up to breathe because of how your body sat. And so every breath, painful, you'd have to put all the weight onto those nails, pick yourself up, take a breath, and then slump down. To where crucifixion didn't kill you from blood loss or blunt force trauma, you eventually suffocated to death because you ran out of strength to pick yourself up. And they would take him off and they would put him in a grave. And here's the key none of that happened only because Judas was a rat. That was the plan from the beginning, not just the beginning of Jesus' ministry, but the beginning of time, before the beginning of time, because on that cross, Jesus became your sin. Every lie you've ever told, every secret you've ever tried to live out, every time you've ran in the opposite direction of the Lord, every time you've looked at something you shouldn't look at, said something you shouldn't say, not done something you should have done, all of that sin deserved punishment. And God took all of that punishment and poured it onto Jesus at the cross. Because God has to punish sin. If he doesn't, it means no one or anything really matters. He just lets people off the hook. We don't want a God like that. But God put the punishment for Jesus' sin or for your sin onto Jesus so that you could be set free, so that you could become a child of God. Why would Jesus go through that? Well, Scripture says, for the joy set before him, and here's the thing: the joy set before him was you. He loved you. He loves you. And the joy of making a way for you to come back to him and have a relationship with him is what got him through all the agony of the cross. And they say that value is determined by what someone is willing to pay. Jesus was willing to pay his life to bring you back to him. And so let me let me speak to you right now. If you identify with the value things we were talking about up front, if you walk around, you say, hey, nobody loves me, nobody cares about me, nobody sees me, nobody hears me, because I don't have a boyfriend, I don't have a girlfriend, I'm not funny, I don't look the way that you're supposed to look. I don't have the Instagram followers, I'm not on the team, I'm not athletic enough. If you think you have no value, I want you to know one thing before you leave tonight. The God of the universe places so much value on you that he would send his son to die for you. And he places value on you in the middle of your brokenness. Not the version of you that can clean yourself up enough to somehow squeak into the pearly gates. No, he sees all of your sin. He sees you at your worst day. The secrets that you wish you could take to the grave, the bones in your closet that you pray never come out. He sees all of that. He sees the way you talk when people aren't around, he sees the way you treat your parents, he sees the way you treat your siblings, he sees the way you look at yourself in a mirror, he sees your internet browser history, he sees all of it. And he says, I love you. I want you. And that's the gospel. If you don't believe it, look at the cross. That the God of the universe says, You are valuable because I love you and I'm willing to pay the highest price to bring you back to me. And so Jesus saw you as valuable enough to die for. My question is tonight: do you see him as valuable enough to surrender everything? Because that's the ask. Not to run to the top of a mountain, not to attend X amount of church, not to check the box, not to be in this many Bible studies, to do what the woman did. Say, God, I don't got much. I'm a broken man, I'm a broken woman. I've got a hat past, I've got a history, I've got these disorders, I've got these things that I I can't I can't fix on my own. God, I don't have much, but whatever I have, it it's yours. Would you do something with it? And at that moment, you become his child. You're a new creation, you're adopted, you're redeemed. The old you is dead in God, and you are alive in Christ.