What an incredible turn of events.
These verses sit between Palm Sunday, or the Triumphant Entry, which is celebrated this week, and the events of Good Friday, which we will be recognizing in just a few days.
And we see here an occasion of worship and an occasion of betrayal.
I’m not sure how many times I’ve read this particular passage, but this last time was different. And that’s why we continue to read our Bibles. Regardless of how many times we’ve read it before, God is always ready to show us something new.
Here we are, at the last week of Money Month 2026. Are you still doing alright? Are we still having fun?
For those who are visiting with us today, or new to Cornerstone, this is an annual event. Each March, the preaching team takes the opportunity to teach the theology of stewardship.
Which is just a fancy way of saying we look at what the Bible says about money. What we’ve got, how we got it, and what we do with it after we get it.
“The Bible speaks often, and very directly, about money, possessions, and stewardship. From Genesis to The Revelation, cover to cover.
If the Bible thinks how we deal with what we have is that important, I would suspect God wants it to be a priority for those who claim to follow Him.
And there are two reasons why money needs to be a topic in the church. The first is practical. As long as the church has expenses, those expenses will need to be paid, and within the biblical framework, God’s people provide for God’s work.
The early church didn’t rely on grants from the Roman government or fundraisers; it was through the sacrificial giving of God’s people that the early church existed.
And the second reason is a spiritual reason, and that is worship has always been connected to sacrifice.
The first account of worship recorded in the Bible, is found in the book of Genesis, it involved sacrifice, and that theme is repeated throughout the Bible.
And in the truest sense, we aren’t giving to God; we are simply returning to God some of what he has given to us.
The nice thing about our model is that means I don’t ambush you about money throughout the rest of the year.
And we culminate Money Month with an event we call Step Up Cornerstone, which happens today, and we will be talking more about that later in the service.
This year, we have used Morgan Housel’s best-selling book, The Psychology of Money, as a springboard. The book offers 19 counterintuitive lessons which reveal why financial success is 80% psychology, 20% knowledge.
Even though Housel doesn’t frame his book as theology it contains some great lessons for us, “There is no reason to risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need.”
“Enough is realizing that the opposite, an insatiable appetite for more, will push you to the point of regret.” And “Spending money to show people how much money you have is the fastest way to have less money.”
He never wrote a book about money, but my Daddy used to say, “Spending money you don’t have to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like.”
And maybe you’re thinking that’s what Dave Ramsey says. I can assure you that Burt Guptill said it before Dave did.
Dave may not have got it from Dad, but I can guarantee you that Dad didn’t get it from Dave.
And so, knowing where we were going with our series, the dichotomy of these two verses jumped out at me. For here we see how these two very different individuals would be defined for the next two thousand years by the financial choices they made.
Let’s go back to our scripture reading, Matthew 26:7 While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume . . .
The story is told in three of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and John. There is another account in the gospel of Luke, but it happened earlier in Christ’s ministry and in a different location and involved a different woman.
By reading all three accounts of this story, we see the full picture. In Matthew and Mark, we discover this happened in Bethany, in the home of a man named Simon, whom Jesus had healed from leprosy. In John, the woman is identified as Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and we are told what type of perfume was in the jar; it was made from the essence of nard.
Now some of you might be thinking, I thought this happened in the home of Lazarus, and his sisters, Mary and Martha.
Me too, that’s what I assumed, and you know what happens when you assume right? Sometimes you’re wrong.
Let’s read John’s account, John 12:1–2 Six days before the Passover celebration began, Jesus arrived in Bethany, the home of Lazarus—the man he had raised from the dead. A dinner was prepared in Jesus’ honour. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who ate with him.
John tells us that Jesus arrived in Bethany, the home of Lazarus. He doesn’t tell us that he stayed in the home of Lazarus, and if he did, we aren’t told that is where the dinner happened.
And then we are told that a dinner was prepared in Jesus’ honour, and Martha served and Lazarus was among those who ate with him.
If it was the home of Lazarus and his sisters, it would seem a little redundant to say that Martha served in her home and Lazarus was among those who ate with Jesus in his house.
That would be like saying that Denn and Angela had you over for dinner, and strangely enough Angela served and Denn ate with you.
But the minutia isn’t the important thing, the primary point that all the writers agree on was that Mary was Thinking about Jesus
In the miniseries “Jesus”, ” which was aired on CBS in the spring of 2000, Mary is portrayed as having a bit of a romantic crush on Jesus. A couple of people who saw the movie found that a little disturbing, but it seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
It would appear that Jesus was close friends with Mary and her siblings, they are mentioned a few times in the gospels, and it seems more than just a casual friendship. And by all accounts, Jesus would have seemed like a good candidate for a husband.
In the book of Luke, we read the account of Jesus being entertained in the home of the siblings. You are probably familiar with the story. Martha is playing the hostess with the mostess, making sure everything is just right, and then she gets cranky with her sister because Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet as he teaches.
And Jesus responds in Luke 10:41–42 But the Lord said to her, ’My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”
In John 11, we read the story of the death of Mary’s brother, Lazarus. If you don’t know the story, spoiler alert, it ends with Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
But Mary didn’t know that was going to be the outcome and so when Jesus shows up, we see her reaction in John 11:32 When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Mary was comfortable enough with Jesus to challenge him.
And here we see Mary in her last recorded encounter with Jesus before his arrest. And it is an act of extravagant worship.
Interesting, Mary learned at Jesus’ feet. Mary grieved at Jesus’ feet, and Mary worshipped at Jesus’ feet. Sounds like there’s a sermon there.
It’s interesting the details the gospels give in stories like this one. John doesn’t just say that it was perfume we are told that it was from the essence of “Nar” and that was a substance that came from a flower called a spikenard which was harvested in the foothills of the Himalayas in India.
This was a very expensive perfume imported from a distant country.
In Matthew’s account he writes that some objected to the gift saying Matthew 26:9 “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
We get a few more details from John who says the perfume was worth a year’s wages. Actually, in the original it says it was worth 300 denarii.
A denarius was a day’s wage, and this perfume cost 300 days’ wages. That’s a year’s wages, if you worked 6 days a week.
That’s quite a gift. Some scholars think that Mary may have been collecting and saving this perfume for her body to be anointed with when she died.
And so, she took what she had saved for her funeral expenses to give to Jesus and don’t even get me started on the obscene amounts of money we spend to bury dead people.
And so, Mary gave to Jesus because she was grateful for all that he had done, for her and for her family. And it wasn’t a tip or a pittance; it was a gift of significance because in her mind and her heart, the gift that Christ had given her was a gift of significance.
And her gift didn’t just make an impact on Jesus because we are told ‘The house was filled with the fragrance.” Mary’s gift not only made an impact on Christ, it made an impact on everyone present.
Let’s skip down to the second part of the passage.
Matthew 26:14–15 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, went to the leading priests and asked, “How much will you pay me to betray Jesus to you?” . . .
Mary may have been thinking about Jesus, but Judas was Thinking about Judas
There have been a multitude of reasons suggested for Judas’ betrayal. There are those who felt that Judas betrayed Jesus because he was disappointed in his teaching. That Jesus was teaching love and forgiveness, and Judas was looking for revolt and retribution.
It’s suggested that Judas was expecting a messiah who would overthrow the Roman Government, but apparently that wasn’t on Jesus’ agenda.
Other’s feel that Judas we simply trying to force Jesus into revealing himself as messiah and that he never expected it to go as far as it did, not only with Jesus’ arrest but his eventual execution.
It’s also been suggested that Judas saw the way things were going and decided to turn against Jesus in order to save himself.
Others say it was all about the money.
When trying to figure out how much 30 pieces of silver would be worth in today’s money, it comes down to my favourite answer. It depends. If it was thirty denarii then it would be the equivalent of a month’s salary.
A tenth of what the perfume that Mary anointed Jesus with would have been worth.
On the other hand, if it was a Shekel, it would be worth three times a much, so perhaps the equivalent of three months’ wages.
Either way, not a bad piece of change for an evening’s work. Sometimes money talks so loud that it can’t be ignored.
Paul could have been writing to Judas when he wrote in 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
But all of those motives share one thing in common, that was Judas.
Mary Gained More than she Gave
In the simplest explanation, Jesus tells those in the room that Mary would be remembered for what she had done. And for two thousand years the story has been told, and preachers have preached about it.
Had she kept her oil for the original purpose, she wouldn’t have been condemned, it was her oil to do with as she wished. But the blessing for her came when she sacrificially gave her oil to worship Jesus.
There’s a little bit of twist in John’s telling of the story, when Judas criticized Mary for doing what she did, Jesus replies with these words, John 12:7 Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial.”
Interesting, that ultimately, she used what many scholars feel was intended for her funeral, and Jesus foresees it as an early statement of his death.
In the Wesleyan Commentary, Joseph Dongell writes, “Jesus was fast approaching His death, and Mary’s act of devotion had served to underscore, in a way perhaps unknown to her, the nearness of that end and His burial.
Her application of perfume to His body anticipated the application of perfume to His corpse. As always, Jesus could see the significance of the future within the present.”
Judas’ story picks up in the next chapter, when he suddenly realizes the consequences of his actions.
Matthew 27:3–5 When Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the thirty pieces of silver back to the leading priests and the elders. “I have sinned,” he declared, “for I have betrayed an innocent man.”
“What do we care?” they retorted. “That’s your problem.” Then Judas threw the silver coins down in the Temple and went out and hanged himself.
The leading priests picked up the coins. “It wouldn’t be right to put this money in the Temple treasury,” they said, “since it was payment for murder.”
After some discussion they finally decided to buy the potter’s field, and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners.
Judas Lost More than he Gained
So interesting, that Mary gave, what was intended for her burial, and Judas gained what was ultimately used for burials.
While the scriptures don’t tell us that is where Judas was buried, Chistian tradition has maintained that he was buried in the field his betrayal money funded.
A little background, the term potter’s field is an expression used to mean a place where unclaimed bodies, or in the past the bodies of paupers, were buried.
But the term originates here, and it was referred to as a potter’s field because originally that land had been covered in clay that was harvested for pottery, and when the clay was gone, the land wasn’t really good for anything else, until it was purchased by the priests. A little value-added portion of the passage.
But even if Judas had not hanged himself, (another little tidbit, if you hang a picture on a wall it’s been hung; if you hang a person, they have been hanged. You gotta love the English language)
But even if Judas had not hanged himself, and even if the thirty pieces of silver hadn’t been used to purchase this piece of property, Judas couldn’t have kept it.
That’s the truth found in Henry Van Dyke’s statement, “What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else. But what you are will be yours forever.”
Recently I discovered this quote by Walter Lord, a Titanic historian and the author of A Night to Remember, which became the basis of the 1959 movie by the same name, “If wealth meant so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?”
Judas lost everything he craved, the money, his position in a restored Israel, the respect of others. All because of a decision he made.
Let’s see if I can put a bow on this.
Two people, both disciples of Jesus. Both who had experienced his love and grace. Both who had witnessed his miracles and sat under his teaching. And both who made a life-defining decision about how they would respond.
One who gave everything in an epic act of worship, and one who lost everything in an epic act of betrayal.
And that, my friends, is the gift of free will. Grace-given freedom. We all get to decide how we will respond to what God has already been doing in our lives.
We are tempted to think that it was Mary and Judas’ heart condition that led them to make these decisions. However, listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew. This is part of the Jesus teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 6:19–20 “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.”
And then he finishes with these words. Matthew 6:21 Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I always heard that reversed. I always heard, at least in my mind, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will also be.”
I thought that Jesus was teaching us that what we did with our treasure would be determined by our heart condition.
But at least here, Jesus tells us that our heart condition would be determined by how we deal with what we have, our treasure.
Jesus didn’t say that your treasure will follow your heart; instead, he says that your heart will follow your treasure.
Which is why Housel warns us, “There is no reason to risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need.”
Don’t be led astray by your treasure.
So where are you at today?
This is family time now, if you are a guest with us this morning, thank you for being here, I trust that you enjoyed the worship and the message and if you can give me a couple of minutes to talk to the Cornerstone family, I will appreciate it.
This is Step-up Sunday. For those of you who are new to Cornerstone, this was part of the decision made almost 25 years ago.
We realized that at Cornerstone we were dealing with our finances the same way that many other churches were, and it wasn’t working.
Each year we would create a budget, knowing what we needed to put on the expense side. But not really knowing what would be on the income side. So, we’d guess, and it seemed that each year, we would fail to meet our budget, and I would have to preach on money. Which, regardless of how I presented it was me scolding people for not giving enough.
But what if we could create a budget, knowing what would be on the income side.
That would not only allow the church to create a realistic budget but would allow each person in the church family to be part of the decision, by filling out an estimate of giving card, you would be able say: This is the type of church I’d like to have.
You understand that God doesn’t need you to give for His sake. God is God. The entire universe is his.
So, if he doesn’t need us to give for his sake, then it must be that he wants us to give for our sake. Our giving shapes our response to God.
You can’t PAY a tithe. It’s not a debt you owe.
You can’t GIVE a tithe. It doesn’t belong to you.
You can only BRING the tithe. You’re bringing to God what is already His.