βAnd said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silverβ (Matthew 26:15).
How much is Jesus Christ worth in the eyes of lost man?
Let us read todayβs Scripture within its context: βThen one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time he sought opportunity to betray himβ (Matthew 26:14-16).
βThen Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potterβs field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the potterβs field, as the Lord appointed meβ (Matthew 27:3-10).
The 30 pieces of silver was enough to buy a field; it was an enormous sum of money. The King James Bible does not specify what types of coins the priests paid Judas, but the β30 pieces of silverβ is estimated to be the equivalent of three or four monthsβ wages. According to the Mosaic Law, the price of a slave was βthirty shekels of silverβ (Exodus 21:32). In the eyes of lost mankind, the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, was worth nothing more than a slave!
βThen took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointmentβ (John 12:3).
About six days before His crucifixion, Jesus is in Bethany, a town one or two miles (1.6 or 3.2 kilometers) southeast of Jerusalem. He has raised Lazarus from the dead just a short time earlier (John chapter 11), and they are holding a supper for Jesus there in Bethany (John 12:1-9). Lazarusβs sister Mary (cf. John 11:2) anoints Jesusβ feet as recorded in todayβs Scripture.
Mary took a βpoundβ (roughly a pint or 0.5 liter) of the very intense aromatic essential oil βspikenardβ and poured it onto Jesusβ feet. She then wiped His feet with her hair. (You can grasp Maryβs humility by remembering that sandaled feet that trod hot Middle Eastern sand were quite filthy, sweaty, and smelly. Can you imagine wiping your hair on those feet?)
Spikenard, whose plant derivative is still unknown, was just as the Bible saysββvery costly.β In fact, when Judasβthe thieving treasurer of the apostlesβsaw what Mary did, he bemoaned, βWhy was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?β (John 12:5). Verse 6 says, βThis he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.β Judas just wanted the spikenard sold so he could pocket the money!
The word βpenceβ in our King James Bible means the Roman coins called denarii. A denarius was equal to one dayβs wages, so 300 pence was roughly ten monthβs wages (the denarius was originally worth the price of ten donkeys, so 300 pence was 3,000 donkeys!). Mary recognized the great value of the Lord Jesus Christ: He was worth far more than the mere 30 pieces of silver (three or four monthsβ wages) Judas later received for betraying Him. May we Christians value the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, as much as Mary did! source
