Matthew 26:15: What is Jesus Worth to You?

 “What will you give me if I deliver him to you?”  And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. Matthew 26:15

"God, I pray thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee.  Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine.  I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus" (From the journal Jim Elliot wrote in college. He was martyred as a missionary in Ecuador a few years later in 1956.)

In Exodus 21:32 it is written that if a slave is accidently killed, then the owner of that slave shall be paid thirty pieces of silver.   When Caiaphas offered Judas thirty pieces of silver, it was no coincidence.  The high priests “sit on Moses’ seat” (23:2); it is their job to know the Law and to teach it to the people.   To agree upon thirty pieces of silver sent a loud message as to how much both parties thought Jesus was worth.  

What is Jesus worth to you? 

Satan will constantly poke you, prod you and tempt you, trying to get you to deny the Lord.  What will it take for you to “sell off” the Lord?  A promotion?  A sizzling love life?  Bigger house?  Expensive car? 

“Money causes people to do weird things,” Larry Thompson, my former director, told me once.  His observation has proven true.  Over the years I have seen three times as many people disqualified from missionary work due to reasons of financial improprieties than any other reason, including sexual immorality. 

At the end of the movie Schindler’s List, there is as a dramatic scene where Oskar Schindler laments that he held on to possessions that he could have sold to save more Jews from the Nazis in World War II.  “Why did I keep the car?” Oskar cries, “Ten people right there.  Ten people.”   When we get to the end of our lives, will we realize we have sacrificed the eternal worth of Jesus Christ for the temporal value of money?    

Jesus is not just a prophet or wise sage.   Jesus is Almighty God!   For He said before raising Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?”  (John 11:25-26)  Jesus proved these words true when He raised Lazarus from the dead.   And He highlighted these words when He raised Himself from the dead!  

Show me a man who attaches a dollar figure to Jesus, then I will show you a man who does not believe Jesus is God.  Nothing we could possibly have is more valuable than Jesus.    He is our God, our Creator, our redeemer, our sustainer, our intercessor, our advocate.   He is the great “I AM,” the Lord of Lords and King of Kings!

Recently we said goodbye to Ionel Teodoescu.   Ionel (“YO-nell”) walked away from a job that would have made him a rich man in post-Communist Romania.   Instead Ionel chose to invest his life in spreading the gospel.   For the next 20 years the Lord used him mightily until He called Ionel to his reward this spring. 

In one act of worship, Mary invested a year’s wages (see Mark 14:5).   For thirty pieces of silver, Judas sold his soul.    Moses “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt,” (Hebrews 11:26).  If you have toured the museums of Cairo or seen the pyramids of Giza, then you have had a small taste of what Moses rejected in order to gain Christ.  Jesus is not worth anything at all until He is worth all we have.  “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose,” Jim Elliot once wrote.    

What is Jesus worth to you?