Matthew 26: What Day Did Jesus Die?

The four Gospels could have no real purpose, no real significance without the passion of Christ. That's the term we use to describe His torturous road to death on the cross and then His resurrection. In fact, we can’t even call them Gospels if it didn't include that ending. Because the good news of these four accounts is ultimately found in the death of the Lamb of God in our place and the resurrection of Christ to bring us into glory with Him. 

Everything that we will be touching on in the Book of Matthew in the weeks and months to come leads to this final section which covers the events of Jesus's betrayal, His trial, His torturous death through crucifixion and then His resurrection. This final section, beginning today in Chapter 26 and running through the end to Chapter 28, is obviously the climax of this book. 

We're going to look at the last Supper, His betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, His trials before the High Priest and Pontius Pilate, His crucifixion and His resurrection and appearances. These things cumulatively give the gospel its significance. For if you did not have this part of the story, the rest of it wouldn't matter. So we're going to take a fresh look at these events as we go into them, as it’s likely that our understanding of the events surrounding the Passion of Christ has been heavily colored by church tradition and even some folklore that has made its way into the teaching in the church. 

You probably know, for example, that the birth story of Jesus at the beginning of the Gospels is often overshadowed by Christmas traditions. And even the lyrics of Christmas carols teach us incorrectly at times about what took place during those events. And so likewise, in the Passion of Christ, you're going to find that much of what you're learning has been colored to some extent by Easter traditions in various churches and even by popular culture in their views on the resurrection - and even just the day of the week that Jesus died on is often misunderstood.

At this point, let's revisit a few things, particularly the circumstances of the moment that we're in in the beginning of Chapter 26, and the timeline of the events that we’re going to study. This is a necessary thing – when you get into a new section of the Gospel, you want to make sure you understand where you're coming into it from.

So in the final week of Jesus' life on earth, we know He enters Jerusalem on a Sunday, the day we traditionally now call Palm Sunday. And as we studied this a few chapters back, Jesus entered directly into the temple on that first day. He taught on that day and then again on Monday and again the next day, on Tuesday. And in those encounters, He was being investigated and tested by the religious authorities of Israel, each of them trying to find flaws in Jesus. He passed all of those inspections, proving Himself to be the worthy sacrifice - the Lamb of God, spotless, sacrificed for our sake. And each night as He finished, He would leave the Temple Mount. He would go eastward up the top of the Mount of Olives and over the back side of the Mount of Olives to a little town called Bethany. And He probably spent the night in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, who you know about from elsewhere in the Gospels. 

And we got to the start of Chapter 24 into the Olivet Discourse. That's the discourse that Jesus delivered while He was sitting on the Mount of Olives after He left the temple on that Tuesday afternoon. The disciples had posed those questions to Him about the end times and Jesus sat down with them and answered them on the Mount of Olives. And then when that discourse was over, He resumed His travel over the hill to the other side of the Mount of Olives to the town of Bethany to spend Tuesday night with Mary, Martha and Lazarus. And that is where we are now in the text of Matthew as we open up in Chapter 26. So let's read their Chapter 26 verse one.

Matt. 26:1 When Jesus had finished all these words, He said to His disciples,

Matt. 26:2 “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion.”

So we paused there. Jesus says in two days, He'll be handed over for crucifixion on the Passover. Now, that phrase “handed over”, it implies a transfer of custody from one authority to another. In its very simplest sense, Jesus was just referring to the way Judas will hand Him over to the Jewish authorities. But it's equally true that Jesus was referring to the way the Jewish authorities in turn handed Jesus over to the Romans for crucifixion. But in a spiritual sense, Jesus was also referring to the Father's plan to hand His son over to the enemy, to Satan, for him to do as he wished for a moment. 

And that's the story Matthew is now setting out to tell us in these final chapters. He wants to help his readers understand: how is it that the Lord of creation, this Man, that Matthew has now spent 25 chapters proving to his readers is the son of God, the Messiah, the Creator Himself – we have now come through those chapters realizing the truth of that claim – and yet, as we get to the end of this story, we find the Creator crucified by criminals. It would suggest that maybe our belief in Him as Messiah was misplaced. For, after all, who could kill God? Well, Matthew needs you to understand why this death happens and how it happens in light of the fact that Jesus is Messiah. 

But before we get into that story, Jesus comments here on a timeline issue. He says that the Passover is going to be two days away. Now there is still a good deal of mystery as you study this, and as you hear others teach it about the timeline of the events of Jesus' death and resurrection - most of us have been taught that He died on a Friday and then rose again on a Sunday. But as we're going to see going forward, that that is not true.

And not only is the timing of the day of His death wrong, but there's other dates, other events within this week that have been misplaced over the course of teaching. And so as we study through this, we're going to take moments along the way to pause when we see time references like we do here, to consider what it all means, and to get it right. And we will start today with some background, some ground rules for how we look at time in Scripture. These are important timekeeping guidelines that will help us find the correct interpretation of what we read. 

The first of these guidelines or rules is that the Jews reckon a day of the calendar differently than we do. According to the way God established days when He created everything back in Genesis Chapter one, the Jews took note of the methodology God used and they used His methodology as the basis for their own time reckoning. In Genesis, we find God creating each day of the first week, beginning with a 12-hour period of darkness, followed by a 12-hour period of light. God called the arrival of that dark period “evening”, and He called the arrival of the period of light “morning”, and He said that one of those, plus the other of those together is one day. And because God chose to describe a day of creation as an evening and then a morning, Jews adopted the same convention for counting their days. 

So in the way of Jewish reckoning, one day of the week begins at 6 p.m. roughly in an evening time period and proceeds through the whole of that night and the whole of the next day until 6 p.m. the following evening. That would constitute “one day” for them. So, for example, if it were on Monday: Monday's begin at 6 p.m. on Sunday afternoon - or Sunday evening at sundown on Sunday - and they continue all the way until sundown on Monday afternoon. That would be Monday in Jewish reckoning. 

Now we don't count days that way. We count days beginning at midnight. So if I put our way of counting next to the way that Jews count - you see, our day actually is six hours after the start of the Jewish day. We start at midnight. They started earlier at 6 p.m.  Now that's an important difference in which time references are offered in the Gospels. If you assume they're looking at it from the modern day, you'll be wrong. They're looking at it from the Jewish perspective. 

And then the second difference in Jewish reckoning is that when you count days like it is two days away, three days away or something like that, Jews consider any part of a day to be equal to the whole day. So, for example, here's a list of days of the week Sunday through Thursday in this example. And so if we were sitting at some part of Sunday - let's say it was 5 p.m. on Sunday afternoon - we would only be one hour away from the start of Monday at 6 p.m.

Nevertheless, if you were speaking to a Jew at that time at 5 p.m. And you asked that Jew, for example, how many days until Tuesday? The Jew would still count the final hour of Sunday. That one hour that's still remaining on Sunday afternoon, they would count that in giving you the answer. So they would say there were two days until Tuesday. So Sunday afternoon is a day and Monday is a day – so two days before Tuesday, if you are following the logic there. 

So that difference is important because when people start counting time in days, you don't want to miss the fact that they're counting their current day as a day, no matter how little time is left in that day. That takes us back to Matthew 26. In Matthew 26, Jesus just said the Passover would come after two days, or we could simply say it this way: it was two days away. We want to then determine what day of this week in Jewish reckoning was the Passover in that particular year.

So Jesus said the Passover was two days away. But of course, that means we need to know what day of the week Jesus was on when He spoke those words. That would help us count two days and find the Passover day. We get our answer to which day Jesus is referring to, that day reference from consulting Matthew and other gospels. 

First, the Gospels report that Jesus came to Bethany and stayed in the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus the day before He entered Jerusalem. And we know from the Gospel accounts that He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Palm Sunday, as we call it now, is the day that He left Bethany, walked over the hill of the Mount of Olives, and rode the donkey into Jerusalem.

And John tells us that the day before He walked into Jerusalem, the day He was in Bethany, John tells us that day was a Saturday, six days before Passover. That's in the Gospel of John. 

So remembering our rules for counting. You count the day you're on as day one. So when John says on Saturday they were six days from Passover - Saturday is the first of those six days that you count because it was still part of the day. And then Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And then Thursday is your sixth day. So, that would tell us that the Passover in this particular year happened on a Thursday. 

Now, after Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey on Sunday, we’re told that He then goes directly into the temple to preach that afternoon. Mark says He then spent Sunday afternoon teaching, and the next two days as well - Monday and Tuesday.

And we also know from Mark that He would return at night to sleep in Bethany each evening after that teaching. So that means on Sunday night and Monday night, He was spending His time back in Bethany. And all of the synoptic Gospels tell us that it was after that Tuesday teaching that Jesus returned up to the Mount of Olives, where He delivered the Olivet Discourse. That's what we were studying in Chapters 24-25. 

And that brings us here again to Chapter 26. So we know from all of what we just said that at the beginning of Chapter 26, we're on a Tuesday afternoon. He has finished teaching in the temple that day, He's gone back to the Mount of Olives, He's just delivered the Mount of Olives address to the disciples on the end times, it’s just shortly before sundown. And at sundown, Wednesday will begin. 

And before sundown on Tuesday afternoon, Jesus says: two days remain until Passover. So, let's use our rules once more. Using our rules, we count the little bit that remained on Tuesday - speaking in Chapter 26 - that would be His first day. And then He says, there were two days, so we count the next one: that's Wednesday. And then pass over again. 

So the point is this: Matthew's time reference in Chapter 26 agrees with John's time reference back in John 14 - both of them telling us that the Passover is going to happen on a Thursday. Which means Jesus died on Thursday. Not on a Friday, as tradition tells us. And we're going to see additional evidence later in Matthew that confirms Jesus did, in fact, die on a Thursday. 

Now, at this point, you’re probably asking yourself, “Well, this is all kind of interesting, but did we really need this level of detail? Is it really that important?” 

To answer that question, consider this: is it important to you that your accountants can do math properly? What if their math skills were correct most of the time but once in a while, he or she made some careless mistakes? They missed a zero here or there, when they were calculating your tax bill or when they were balancing your account. Would that be important to you? Would you have a concern about that? I mean, we want our accountants’ math to always be precise because it's our money that these people are dealing with, and we don't want it mismanaged. 

But there's actually a more important reason why you would want your accountant to know how to do math properly, because knowing how to add and subtract properly is a basic test of competence and trustworthiness, for that matter, for any accountant. So if an accountant can't do math, then that person is not competent to manage your finances. Wouldn't you agree? And that is why we care so much about details like this when we study Scripture, it is a basic test of competence. 

Making sense of Scripture, we know, is ultimately the job of the Holy Spirit working inside us. But the Bible says that the Lord brings understanding to those who handle the word with care and precision. Paul says to his protege, Timothy in 2. And second Timothy verse. Chapter two, Verse 15. He says to that man:

2Timothy. 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

Paul didn't say you should mostly accurately handle the word of truth or just make sure you handle the important things accurately. No, he makes no exceptions to this. Those who worked diligently to handle the word of God accurately are the ones who are approved by God. He reveals answers to those who seek truth in a diligent manner because it brings Him glory to see us diligently seeking Him in His word. 

Conversely, when a teacher or a student approaches the study of God's word in a lazy manner as if we are content with rounding errors, for example, we’re like a CPA or an accountant who says, “you know what, a little zero here and there, a little miss, adding wrong, subtracting wrong…. It's no big deal. We got the big numbers, right?” You don't believe that, do you? 

And we shouldn't believe it when it comes to the word of God. While you might think that understanding exactly which day of the week Jesus died on is just a minor detail, you also may underestimate how much getting things like that wrong will affect the walk of somebody in the church when they later realize it wasn't true.

If you are a believer who wrestles with the trustworthiness and accuracy of Scripture, and with the way that Scripture has been handled over the centuries - if you wonder if things have been distorted, if you question whether it is truly a record from God or was it just the writings of men – if that's where your heart is, then these little details can be the make-or-break differences in whether you put your trust in the Bible or not. 

We have to take care with what God has given us so that we get everything right as best we can, not overlooking even the smallest detail lest we give somebody reason to doubt or question the authenticity or the accuracy of Scripture, because the Bible, left to itself, will validate itself. It doesn't need our help to validate it. 

The problem is, we do the opposite. We undermine it by changing or adding or mistaking things with contradictions of our own misunderstandings. That's what we're trying to avoid. We want to be in a workman who is approved by God because we were diligent with His Word.

Let’s return to Chapter 26. And what we are seeing here is an interesting pattern all the way to the end of the book. Matthew begins to jump around from scene to scene, highlighting certain events, putting them together in just a certain fashion to tell a story which reads a little bit like a movie script where the writer is weaving together action that's taking place in different places at the same time. In this case, the events of this final week of Jesus' life are centred around three primary scenes. 

First, you have the scene of Jesus in and around the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives and what goes on there. Secondly, you have Jewish officials in their exclusive homes in the upper city of Jerusalem in their confines, and they're convening together up there. And then thirdly, you have a scene of the Romans and the officials in the Praetorian of the city of Jerusalem. And we're going to move between these three scenes over the next several chapters.

Chapter 26 starts with the scene of Jesus in the garden, and that is in the general vicinity of the Mount of olives. And from this point, we now move to the second scene of the High Priest of Israel, Caiaphas. We pick up there in verse 3: 

Matt. 26:3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named Caiaphas;

Matt. 26:4 and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth and kill Him. 

Matt. 26:5 But they were saying, “Not during the festival, otherwise a riot might occur among the people.”

It's a simple scene, and it sets the stage for what's coming. Caiaphas was the official high priest of Israel at this time, and he convened a secret meeting of chief priests and elders of Israel - that refers to the Sanhedrin. Now a chief priest was among the leaders of the temple operation, and the Sanhedrin was a ruling council made up of Pharisees and Sadducees together who collectively ruled over the religious life of Israel. Now all of these authorities operated under Roman occupation in power. So, the power of these religious leaders was relatively limited. They acted as a kind of quasi government that enforced Jewish law, but they were still required to get Rome's approval in order to carry out any severe form of punishment and certainly capital punishment. 

Now they meet here in a courtyard, we're told, on a Tuesday evening (this is the same day that Jesus was speaking up on the Mount of Olives), probably at Caiaphas’s home, which would have been in the wealthy upper side of Jerusalem. Now under the law of Moses, the high priest of Israel - there's only ever one, supposedly at any given time - that man was to be a descendant of Aaron, and he would inherit his position from his father when he died. But by the time of Jesus’ day, Israel being under Roman control, had lost its ability to appoint its own high priest. The Romans selected the high priest for Israel now, and, of course, they chose men who were loyal to Rome. Now, decades earlier, from this moment, the high priest of Israel had been a man named Annas. But Annas resisted Roman rule when the Romans took over the region, and so the Romans removed him from his office in AD 18 or so, and in his place, they eventually installed his son-in-law, Caiaphas., but they didn't kill Annas. In fact, Annas is still alive now, in this time as Jesus has entered Jerusalem for the last day. 

And so you have Caiaphas in the city of Jerusalem, and you still have Annas. And most Jews at that point in history saw themselves as having two high priests because they still respected Annas, even though the Romans had kicked him out. Now, in this meeting, you have Caiaphas introducing a conspiracy to seize Jesus and later in the week of Passover, to kill Him. But they had a problem. Jesus' popularity had become too much of a threat for them to act on their desire to remove Him. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

On the one hand, you had Jesus rebuking these men publicly, doing great damage to their reputation. And on the other hand, they knew that His popularity was leading some within the nation of Israel to contemplate a revolution, to install Jesus as king of Israel by force. And during this particular week, the week of Passover, it was a particularly bad time, a dangerous time for this type of thinking, because if they were to conspire to kill Jesus during. During this time, they would end up inciting the crowds against them, who at least at this moment still adored Jesus. 

And during Passover, you could have as many as a million or more Jews packed into a relatively small geographic region for the Passover feast. And so it was a powder keg, ready to blow at any time. And so the Jews, the religious leaders at this time, were looking for a way to get rid of Jesus without inciting the crowds against them. They needed to do it outside the view of the crowds. They needed to do it under the cover of darkness, they said. 

And that just raised a new problem. How do you find Jesus at night among a million people spread out over a hillside and more?  It is almost impossible to find a single man who is unremarkable in appearance, blends into the crowd, especially at night when people dissipate out into the hills to spend the evening.

What they needed was insider information. They needed to know where they could find Jesus at a particular time of night so that they could go there in anticipation of finding Him and seize Him before anybody knew what was going on. They needed someone to betray Him. And that conspiracy sets up the stage for Matthew's next scene. And that scene is where we get an introduction to Jesus' betrayer, Judas. That starts in chapter 26 verse 6. 

Matt. 26:6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper,

Matt. 26:7 a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head as He reclined at the table.

Matt. 26:8 But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why this waste?

Matt. 26:9 “For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.”

Matt. 26:10 But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me.

Matt. 26:11 “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me.

Matt. 26:12 “For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial.

Matt. 26:13 “Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”

Do take note of a time characteristic, a time detail here again. Matthew has actually gone back in time at this point. This scene happened on Saturday afternoon, before the Sunday that Jesus walked in or rode into Jerusalem on that donkey. Why did Matthew jump back in time to tell this story? Well, he does it to connect the conspiracy we just heard about with the man who eventually betrays Jesus. Because even though Matthew doesn't mention his name here, it is this man who is driving the events in this scene. 

So this scene takes place back on Saturday. This is back in Bethany again where Jesus meets Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He's visiting the home of a leper named Simon, we're told, and John's Gospel tells us that in that same home were also Mary, Martha and Lazarus. And in the course of the meal, you have the women Mary and Martha waiting on the men at the table, we’re told in John's Gospel. And at a point during the meal, Mary goes and finds an alabaster vial of a very valuable perfume, and she brings it in, opens it up and pours it all over Jesus.

Now John tells us that the woman who did this was Mary. And as the sister of Martha and Lazarus, she's well known to Jesus. We see her at several points in the Gospel. And in Jesus’ day, when people came to eat, they didn't sit at the table like we do. They reclined on the ground, literally lying on the floor, and they would prop up their bodies on their left elbow, and they would eat with their right hand. Their feet would be spread out behind them, away from the table. 

So while Jesus is in this reclining position, Mary approaches from behind Him with this vial made of alabaster filled with this perfumed oil, and she pours it on Jesus, both His head and His feet. The perfume was pure nard, we're told, and that's a costly scent that's imported from India. So it had to travel a long distance to get to Jerusalem to Mary, and in John's Gospel it’s described as being a litre of perfume. So you have a ridiculously large amount of perfume, and in an extravagant gesture, Mary pours the whole of it on Jesus. 

Matthew confirms in his account this vial was costly. John tells us specifically that it was worth 300 denarii (now as a way of understanding that, a denarii was about one day's wage in that time. So we're talking about nearly a year's wages for someone who might work in an average profession in our day). That's a ton of money.

Mary had probably saved most of her adult life up to this point in order to purchase that vial of perfume, and she did so in preparation for her future wedding day. (In this age, when bathing was not common, or at least not easily done, perfume was greatly valued for its ability to mask odor, obviously, and to give a sense of purification to somebody. 

So a young woman would save for many years in order to purchase the perfume that they intended to use on the special night that they met their groom). So for Mary, this vial represented not only her life savings, it was her most important preparation for the marriage that she longed to have one day., And now she has given it all to Jesus in one extravagant gesture of love. 

Matthew says her perfume was kept in an alabaster vial, and what that's telling us is this is a vial that could only be opened by breaking the cruise off the top of it. Once it was opened, it wasn’t going to last - the perfume would dissipate quickly over time if you didn’t seal the vial back up. So what Mary did was commit the whole thing to Jesus, even at the opening of it. 

And then both Matthew and John report that this scent now filled the house. John tells us again that she also poured it on His feet, and then John tells us that after she poured it on Jesus' feet, she used her hair to wipe His feet. Now that was a tender act, a sacrificial act of love. It honored Jesus. But, it was much more than that.

Because culturally, it was a humbling act. It was actually a shameful act on Mary's part, because in that day, a Jewish woman never let her hair down in public. Women wore or kept their hair long, but they didn't necessarily wear it long. They would cover it up as a sign of modesty. If a woman let her hair down in a public setting, it was considered shameful. Almost as if she were undressing in front of someone.

So in choosing to use her hair to dry Jesus's feet, Mary was making a gesture of humility. In effect, she was accepting upon herself shame so that she could bless Jesus in this humble way. 

Now, if you've been in that room watching this scene as a Jew, for example, you would have been struck by this remarkable contrast in the moment. Because you have on the one hand this humble woman assuming this position of great shame before her Guest, but at the same time as she does this, she is giving this extraordinary gesture of sacrifice. And in so doing, she is bestowing this great honor upon her guests. So the contrast is of great shame and humility to accomplish something of great honor and glory for the one that she serves. 

In Jesus’ time, you anointed people with perfumed oil like this for basically one of four reasons. First, it was a consecration ritual for the temple. People used it in preparation for temple use. Secondly, it was to signify that a person had been chosen by God in a spiritual role, like a priest or a prophet, or in a leadership role, like a king. You would anoint them for service with this oil. Or thirdly, you might apply it to a sick person as an appeal to God for their healing. And then finally, it would be applied to a dead body in preparation for that body's burial. 

And Jesus tells us here in verse 12 that Mary was applying the oil to His body for the fourth of those four reasons - that is in preparation for His coming death and burial. Mary heard Him say, “I'm going to be crucified.” And so she knew what that meant. She knew that He would be taken from her, and she knew that she would probably not have an opportunity to honor Him in death. A crucifixion was not a death of honor. And so she takes the opportunity while she still can to do what she can to honor Him in His coming death. She gives Him a burial anointing reserved for kings, given what she did in sacrifice for Him.

Now imagine the conversation that Mary is having with the Holy Spirit inside her, as she felt prompted by the Spirit to give up her life savings for Jesus - and to do so in this manner, taking something that she thought was precious and valuable to her, pouring it out, effectively dissipating it so that it was of no use to anyone after this. Do you suppose Mary felt a little convicted about this? 

I mean, what would you say if the Lord asked you to take a prized $100,000 bottle of wine and pour it out as an offering? Not drink it, not give it to somebody. Poured out.  Wouldn’t you question God? Wouldn't you ask, “Is that really the best use of these resources, God?” I mean, wouldn't you look for some excuse not to make that sacrifice? 

And Mary probably had a moment of reflection much like that, because it would have been normal for anyone to think like that. But then, just as quickly, she grabbed the vial. She opened it. She poured it out on Jesus. She gave Him the anointing that God the Father intended. 

The Lord asks all believers at some point to humble ourselves, to make our lives a living sacrifice so that He may receive the glory. So the question we all always have to be ready to answer is “Are we going to be prepared to do that?”

Jesus makes this request of Mary because He first saved her through His death. He gave Himself up as a dying sacrifice. So then, in return, He asks His followers to give our lives up as a living sacrifice. It's a pretty reasonable deal when you think about it, and we're told that we are to be prepared for that sacrifice at all times, not knowing how it will come. 

But we know how it often works. We often set limits on what we think we're going to give God. We make bargains with God. We tell Him “You can have everything that we have, everything except that one thing…”

We don't want to give up that one thing, whatever it is. It might be our job, our wealth. It might be our time. It might be some relationship that we're determined to hold onto. It might be a bad habit. It might be an attitude that we like to carry about, or it might be a grievance that we can't seem to let go of, or forget.

But when you set a limit like that before God and you say, “Not that, God”, that will be the thing that He will demand.

Why? Because He knows that's the one thing we're clinging to in our hearts that stands between us and obedience. And His goal is our willing submission and obedience to His glory, but also to our blessing.

But if you hold on to that one thing, you missed the opportunity to see the Lord work some miracle in your life. No, it’s not that you're going to see a burning bush or something, not necessarily. But maybe it's that miracle of seeing forgiveness come in place of a grievance or the miracle of seeing yourself become less dependent on materialism or less committed to the time of investment in things that don't matter. Seeing yourself change is often the biggest miracle any of us will ever know. What is in front of you is an opportunity if you're willing to make the sacrifices God calls you to make now. 

In Mary's case, the Lord promoted her sacrifice of her life savings by pointing out the fact that she will be honored in history for what she did. By her obedience, she glorifies the Lord at least in a couple of ways. First, she gave Jesus the burial honor that He could not have received otherwise at His death, which honored Jesus, and not just in some general sense, but specifically in the sense of the eyes of His disciples. The disciples of Jesus saw this event. They recorded this event in the Gospels, and we have to believe forevermore they remembered what sacrifice looks like, what a humble woman did in that moment to sacrifice for Jesus. 

Mary is often misunderstood. She was misunderstood back in Chapter nine of Luke where she meets Jesus in Martha's home, and Martha criticizes her for her willingness to sit at Jesus’ feet. And here she's being criticized again because she was willing to make a great sacrifice. And so when you do what Christ asks you to do, and you do it with loving intent, be ready for criticism from those who don't understand it. But you'll be pleasing your Lord. 

The second thing Mary does here is she creates a beautiful picture of the purpose of Jesus' death. She humbles herself, endures the shame that came with letting her hair down, and she does all of that in order to bestow great honor on Jesus’ death. And that is a picture of what Jesus does for us. He, too, humbled Himself during the great shame of the cross that He then might bring Mary and all of God's Children into glory with Him.

In a simple gesture, Mary forever memorializes the death and resurrection of Jesus. And the Lord says she will have her reward. Notice in Verse 13, Jesus says that as a result of her obedience, her story will be known by everyone in the church. Everywhere the Gospel is preached, people will know about Mary and what she did for Jesus. 

Could there be any higher honor in this life than to be honored in God's Word in this way? I mean, she made a great sacrifice, yes, but that great sacrifice brought a great reward that could only have come through that sacrifice. And then, of course, we wonder what kind of reward is waiting for her in the Kingdom for her service to Jesus. Look, whatever the value of that vial of perfume, whatever it was in her day, it will pale by comparison to the value of what God has prepared for her in her eternal inheritance. And I will submit to you that we will be more willing to make earthly sacrifices for God now in whatever form He asks, if we understand two things well: the magnitude of His sacrifice for us first, and then secondly, the reward and eternity that awaits us for pleasing Him. 

If you understand those two things, you'll have no problem letting go of anything here that He asks for because they can't begin to compare. Mary apparently understood both of those. At least she understood well enough that sacrifice was worth it, and her motivations are pure. But Matthew says not everybody in that room at that time understood her motivations. And although he doesn't name who objected, we know from John's gospel that the main objections came from one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot. Judas criticizes Mary's actions as wasteful, saying she should have sold the perfume and given the money to the poor. At first Judas appears, in what he says, to have sincere concern for the plight of the poor. But when you go to John's Gospel again you find out the real motive for why Judas says what he says. 

Judas managed the money box for the disciples of Jesus, so he was like a treasurer of a civic organization, and he would collect the donations they might receive from wherever. And then he used that money to pay for meals or accommodations as they moved around. But John says he frequently stole money from the money box, which tells us why Judas was upset that Mary didn't sell the perfume and give the money to the poor. He was upset at having missed out on having access to those funds. He was ready to steal some of them for himself. That detail is a window into the heart of this man. It reveals him to be a man who didn't particularly love Jesus or the other disciples. And he certainly couldn't understand Mary's gesture. 

And John's Gospel confirms that Judas was an unbeliever. Jesus says He selected His 12 apostles, including Judas, knowing full well that one of them was a devil. Jesus calls Judas an unbeliever, to put it simply.

So here's what we know - Jesus intentionally picked an unbeliever to be included among His inner circle so that there would be a man among them who would be willing to betray Jesus, because the other 11 certainly weren't going to do it.

And the conspirators back in the earlier part of this chapter, they sat around saying, “How are we going to do this? How are we going to get our help to find Jesus?” And they imagine themselves driving these events. 

The reality is, God had hand selected the man who would help them, and He had selected Judas three years earlier. Perhaps nowhere in the Bible can you find an example of God's sovereignty more so than in the way that God here selects His own enemy in advance, and by this selection He ensures His own death in a manner and under terms of His own choosing. 

But then, finally, for the day, Judas’s offer here to go sell the perfume to provide for the poor, that offers you a glimpse into the heart and the motives of unbelievers - men who would use godliness as a cover for greed. Judah spent three years with these men, just like the rest of the disciples. He heard Jesus’ teaching. He experienced the miracles of Jesus. And yet, in the end, his best understanding of what to do under these circumstances was to take the perfume, sell it and use the money for the poor.

He adopted stereotypical religious thinking and, for that matter, a ritual in place of understanding what the Lord demanded in that moment. For example, he saw Mary dumping out the perfume and couldn't understand why it was valuable to Jesus. Judas could not understand anything except earthly temporal matters. And that is an indicator, a mark of unbelief. True spiritual understanding lies outside the grasp of an unbeliever because your understanding of those things is dependent on the Holy Spirit. 

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14:

1Cor. 2:14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

That last phrase means those things are known only through a spiritual process. So unbelievers cannot understand God in spiritual ways because they do not have that process of understanding through the Spirit's influence, and if they lack all of that, they fall back on earthly expressions of religion. And so, for an unbeliever, helping the poor is the highest form of religious expression because it seems to be the most magnanimous gesture you could make in this world. But that's the problem - it's limited to this world. 

Unbelievers are drawn to religion, at least at some level. And as such, they try to make this world heaven. They try to make this world a better place, a place that feels as if everything is right. It’s all just a hypocritical veneer effort of self-serving piety. There's nothing there beyond simply looking good or feeling good. Christians need to be aware of this too, because we could be distracted by trying to make this world heaven.

If you have the Spirit of God, then you should know that this world is passing away, and you know what truly matters is what is coming in the world that is yet unseen. That's where our focus should be. There might be opportunities for us to be involved in humanitarian work - but even then, that effort at providing meals to some group of people, for instance, is ultimately about introducing them to eternal things, to the understanding of the Gospel, not merely for their bodies’ sake. 

And Mary was willing to give away her life savings to make something greater available, a sacrifice that had eternal outcomes for the sake of her Lord. And Judas couldn't see the two. He could only see the waste of something material, and the loss of some material opportunity, either for himself or for someone else. He was blind to any spiritual benefit. As Christians, we need to make sure we're making the right sacrifices and according to the Spirit’s leading, not according to the spirit of this world.