Hope Has a Name: With Bible Study FellowshipНамуна

God’s Design

Matthew starts chapter 26 with a contradiction between God’s plans and people’s plans. Jesus has announced that in two days, He will be handed over to be crucified during the Passover festival. However, the chief priests and elders have devised a conflicting scheme. They decide to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him—but not during Passover.

As Matthew knew by the time he wrote these words, God’s sovereign plan for Jesus’s life was accomplished in every detail. The triune God determined and fulfilled His redemptive plan. The Son Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, would die during Passover as our ultimate substitutionary sacrifice for sin. (1) Wicked people plotted, but God was in full control. What the chief priests and elders meant for evil, God meant for the greatest good.

Costly Worship

Matthew, Mark, and John record Jesus’s anointing in Bethany in their gospel accounts. (2) Combining the details reveals the fullest picture of the night. Matthew’s account invites us into Simon the Leper’s home. He is hosting a dinner in Jesus’s honor. It was unheard of for a leper to entertain visitors. In Jewish law, lepers were considered unclean, meaning they couldn’t mingle with others. So, most likely in this context, Jesus had healed Simon from leprosy.

A woman approaches Jesus while He reclines at a table. John’s Gospel identifies her as Mary, Martha’s sister. She pours costly perfume on Jesus’s head to honor Him. Mark’s Gospel sets the price of the perfume above three hundred denarii, the average annual wage for many people at that time.

As the perfume’s powerful aroma fills the house, Jesus’s disciples criticize Mary’s extravagant display of love. She values Jesus more than her greatest treasure, and they complain that the perfume could have been sold to help the poor. But Jesus quickly defends Mary. He declares her act to be “a beautiful thing.”

Jesus describes Mary’s act as a preparation for His burial, noting that while the poor would always be with them, He would not. Jesus promises that Mary’s act of wholehearted love will be told “wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world.” Centuries later, Mary’s generosity in worshiping Jesus still inspires us.

Wicked Betrayal

Matthew and Mark’s accounts follow Jesus’s correction with, “Then Judas ….” This placement suggests Judas reacts to Jesus’s defense of Mary by deciding to betray Jesus. Luke’s account says, “Satan entered Judas.” Putting these accounts together exposes the contrast between Mary’s faithful love and Judas’s faithless wickedness.

Instead of approaching Jesus to give his all, as Mary had done, Judas approaches the chief priests to see what he can get. He asks, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” The conspirators pay Judas 30 silver pieces; not a king’s ransom, but that of a slave. (3) The amount Judas was willing to agree to shows how little he valued the Lord. Judas had been with Jesus for three years, but He still did not truly know or care for Him and the other disciples. Judas refuses to turn back from sin. He accepts the bribe and returns to Jesus only to seek a time and place to betray his “friend.”

Immeasurable Worth

Consider the cost lovingly paid by Jesus Christ, the King of Kings. In His First Coming, God’s Son willingly laid aside heaven’s glory and earthly fame. He took on human form to identify with weak and needy sinners as Immanuel—God with us. (4) He came to redeem (free) sin’s slaves and adopt them as His own beloved children. How will you respond to His immeasurable worth today?

Jesus came to deliver hope. But just as God prophesied, the rejected Messiah laid down His life by His own will and at the time He determined. (5) God’s plan prevailed over evil and people’s wicked plots. Is your heart’s greatest hope for deliverance bound up in someone or something sure to fail you, or is it found in Jesus Christ alone?

Questions

3. In these verses, who honors Jesus, who dishonors Him, and what actions most challenge or inspire you?

INSIGHTS: Honors Jesus: The woman worships freely, giving her best to the Lord. She anoints Jesus for burial. Dishonors Jesus: The disciples unfairly criticize the woman’s lavish actions; they calculate only the cost of the offering, not the worthiness of the worship offered to Jesus. Judas then seeks out religious leaders to pay him for betraying Jesus. Personal responses to these actions will vary.

4. How does Jesus’s response apply to your worship or to the criticism you may have for others’ worship (26:10-13)?

INSIGHTS: Jesus’s response: Jesus rebuked the disciples and declared the woman had done a “beautiful thing.” While the poor would always be with them, her costly sacrifice was a right response and would be recounted as the gospel spread around the world. Personal applications to our experiences will vary.

5. Compare the woman to Judas. What do their differences highlight about Jesus’s worth and how we value Him?

Related Verses

1 God’s plan: Acts 2:22-24

2 Anointing in Bethany: Matthew 26:1-16; Mark 14:1-11; John 12:1-8

3 Slave’s price: Exodus 21:32; Zechariah 11:12-13

4 Immanuel: Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23

5 Jesus’s authority over His death: John 10:18