What Is Jesus Worth to You? Three Responses That Reveal Everything

Meta Description: This Sunday, Pastor Charles walked us through Mark 14 and three very different responses to Jesus during Holy Week — and challenged us to examine our own.

There are sermons that inform, and then there are sermons that hold up a mirror. This past Sunday, Pastor Charles delivered the kind of message that does both — and the reflection wasn't always comfortable. Drawing from Mark 14 and the events of "Spy Wednesday," he helped us see that how we value Jesus reveals everything about where our hearts truly are.

The Heist Nobody Saw Coming

Pastor Charles has a gift for opening a message in a way that makes you lean forward in your seat, and Sunday was no exception. He began by asking if anyone recognized the names D.B. Cooper and Jesse James — famous outlaws whose stories we all know. Then he introduced a name almost no one recognized: David Gant.

In 1997, Gant — a vault supervisor for Loomis Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina — walked into the vault he was trusted to protect and walked out with nearly $17 million. No explosions. No dramatic break-in. He simply used the keys, the codes, and the trust he'd already been given.

"Some of the greatest thefts in history," Pastor Charles observed, "have rarely happened because someone breaks in. They usually happen because someone on the inside opens the door."

That illustration set the stage perfectly for what was about to unfold in Mark 14.

Three Rooms. Three Responses.

Pastor Charles took us into what he called "Spy Wednesday" — the largely unrecorded middle day of Holy Week. While the crowds were quiet and the city was still, three very different scenes were playing out behind closed doors. Three people. Three responses. Three valuations of Jesus.

1. The Religious Leaders: Jesus as an Obstacle to Remove

Somewhere in Jerusalem, the chief priests and scribes were gathered, plotting. Mark 14:1 tells us plainly:

"The chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him. For they said, 'Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.'"

Pastor Charles was careful not to paint these men as cartoon villains. They had built their entire identity and livelihood around the religious system — and Jesus was threatening it. So they did what people often do when something threatens what they've built: they looked for a way to make the problem disappear.

His challenge to us was honest and pointed: Have we ever done the same thing? Not plotted against anyone, of course — but quietly dialed back our obedience when following Jesus started costing us something? When his authority became inconvenient, have we subtly rearranged our lives so his presence is a little less disruptive?

2. The Woman with the Alabaster Flask: Jesus as Priceless

Just a few miles away in Bethany, a very different scene was unfolding. A woman entered the home of Simon the leper, where Jesus was reclining at the table, and broke open an alabaster flask of pure nard — a perfume imported from the Himalayas worth 300 denarii, nearly a full year's wages.

Mark 14:3-9 records the moment:

"She broke the flask and poured it over his head. And there were some who said to themselves indignantly, 'Why was the ointment wasted like this? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.' And they scolded her. But Jesus said, 'Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me... She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.'"

The room's reaction was immediate — what a waste. But Jesus reframed everything. Pastor Charles helped us see that Jesus wasn't dismissing care for the poor here. He was actually quoting Deuteronomy 15, a passage about ongoing, open-handed generosity to those in need. The point wasn't that the poor don't matter — it's that generosity in the Kingdom of God doesn't begin with obligation. It begins with worship.

"When Jesus is your greatest treasure," Pastor Charles said, "open hands come naturally."

The disciples saw waste. Jesus saw worship.

3. Judas: Jesus as a Negotiable Asset

And then — while the fragrance of nard still hung in the air — one of the Twelve quietly got up and left.

"Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him." — Mark 14:10-11

Matthew's account adds the chilling detail: "What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?" They paid him thirty pieces of silver. (Matthew 26:15)

That number wasn't random. Pastor Charles walked us through its significance — from Exodus 21, where thirty shekels of silver was the compensation paid for a gored slave, to Zechariah 11, where God says with biting irony: "What a magnificent price they have valued me at." The Son of God, valued at the price of a dead slave.

Pastor Charles traced Judas's path not as a sudden fall, but as a slow drift — misplaced devotion leading to drifting, drifting leading to disappointment, disappointment left unconfessed becoming disillusionment, and disillusionment finally becoming desertion. It didn't happen overnight. It rarely does.

The most sobering moment of the message came when Pastor Charles said quietly: "There are way more days that I'm closer to Judas than I am to that woman."

The Question We Can't Avoid

Three people. Three valuations of Jesus.

• To the chief priests, he was worth eliminating.
• To the woman, he was worth everything.
• To Judas, he was worth exactly thirty pieces of silver.

Pastor Charles closed with the question that's still sitting with many of us: What is Jesus worth to you?

Not in theory. Not in the comfortable moments. But when following him is costly, when his authority disrupts your plans, when he doesn't deliver what you expected — is he still priceless? Or has he become negotiable?

Take the Next Step

If Sunday's message stirred something in you, we'd encourage you to:

• 📖 Read Mark 14:1-11 on your own this week and sit with the contrast between the woman and Judas.
• 🎥 Watch the full sermon on our YouTube channel if you missed it or want to share it with someone.
• 💬 Bring this question to your small group — What is Jesus worth to me right now, in this season of my life?

And if you've never taken that step of surrendering your life to Jesus — of saying, like the woman, "You are worth everything" — we'd love to talk with you. Reach out to us anytime, or connect with someone on our team this Sunday.

"She has done what she could." — Mark 14:8

May that be said of us, too.

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