What measures your worth? Matthew 12:15-37
- Sep 14, 2025
- 5 min read
Part 1: What defines your day?
How do you judge your day… really? Not the “How’s your day?” “Good.” answer. But the honest one—when you’re lying in bed at night, replaying everything.
Is it what you accomplished? The people you talked to? The things you experienced? Maybe a little bit of all of it.
For me, most definitely, it’s: what did I check off my to-do list? I like getting things done. It feels good to feel like you accomplished something.
But when the day doesn’t go my way—when things come up that I can’t control—sometimes I let it affect me a little too much. And I forget something that’s hard to remember when you had a beautiful day planned:
What I do, what I produce, what I accomplish… that is not what defines me.
And look—this isn’t just a “me” problem. This is how society has trained us.
When someone asks, “What do you do?” everybody in the room knows they mean, “What’s your job?” Not your hobby. Not what you’re doing today. Your career. And hidden inside that question is the assumption that your value is tied to what you produce.
But Jesus does not define you by what you produce.
And praise God for that, because some days, if your worth is based on performance, the scoreboard is going to be rough.
The value that’s already secure
Here’s the foundation: the thing that defines us is already accomplished, already secure.
The life where you find your worth is not mainly the life you lived today. It’s the life Jesus lived 2,000 years ago—and the life He continues to live in us right now.
And that’s why hustle culture is such a trap.
Hustle culture says:
Work hard.
Produce.
Build.
Grind.
Give everything else up if you have to.
And once you “make it,” then you’ll finally feel valuable.
But that system will not love you back.
A testimony: hustling into burnout
I’ve lived the consequences of that way of life.
I loved being a youth pastor. I really did. But even though I knew God had me there for that season, bitterness crept in, because it didn’t feel like my “career.” And because I didn’t feel like I was producing enough, I started believing the lie.
So I stepped down to build my own business—and for three years I gave it everything.
And I can tell you what it produced in me:
Loneliness.
Burnout.
Hopelessness.
And it wasn’t even that some big external tragedy happened. It was more sobering than that: I realized that even if it succeeded, I still wouldn’t want it—because I was never going to be satisfied.
That’s when I finally looked up, and remembered what gives true value.
And that’s when I started taking steps back into resting—resting in the value of Jesus, instead of trying to create value out of my own strength.
Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is say, “I give up.”
The world says, “Never give up.” But sometimes you need to give up, because the path you’re on is just you running into the same wall over and over, trying to build a worth you were never designed to build.
Part 2: Jesus’ quiet strength and your mission
Now watch what Matthew shows us about Jesus.
Matthew says Jesus knew what the Pharisees were planning, so He withdrew; people followed Him; and He healed them. Then Matthew tells us this fulfills what was spoken through Isaiah about the Servant of the Lord.
And Isaiah’s picture is so different than what we expect.
He won’t quarrel, won’t cry aloud, and won’t make it about Himself in the streets.Then it says: “A bruised reed he will not break” and “a smoldering wick he will not quench.”
To us that might sound poetic—but to them, it’s a picture of how God treats the weak, the worn down, the almost-gone. And it tells you what kind of King Jesus is: not one who crushes people, but one who restores them.
Jesus wasn’t quiet out of fear
Jesus lived a loud life in the sense that He taught, healed, and confronted evil—but He wasn’t loud in self-defense.
He didn’t live in self-promotion. He didn’t live in ego. He didn’t live in pride.
And even when the people closest to Him doubted Him, He kept going.
Even at the end—standing in front of accusers—Jesus refused to play their game, because His worth was not locked into what they thought about Him. His focus was the mission of God.
And that hits home in a world where everybody’s trying to bait everybody into arguments—especially online.
If every moment becomes defensive mode, the mission gets blurry.
The mission continues—even under attack
Right after that Isaiah quote, Matthew shows Jesus healing a man who was demon-oppressed, blind, and unable to speak. The crowds start asking if He could be the Son of David, and the Pharisees respond by saying He casts out demons by Beelzebub.
Jesus answers with straight logic:
A kingdom divided against itself can’t stand
If Satan is casting out Satan, it’s self-destruction.
But if Jesus is casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon them
And He describes it like binding the strong man so the strong man’s house can be plundered.
So in the face of people wanting to destroy Him, Jesus keeps healing. He doesn’t retreat into darkness—He strategically steps away from distractions, then steps into the next assignment with boldness.
And the church needs that wisdom right now.
Not every fight is worth fighting. But some fights are.
The question isn’t, “Can you argue back?” The question is, “Does this push the kingdom forward—or does it just feed my ego?”
Fruit, words, and a warning
Then Jesus moves into one of the most sobering parts of the chapter: He warns that attributing the Spirit’s work to Satan is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in this context. He says a tree is known by its fruit, and that the mouth speaks out of what fills the heart.And He says people will give account for every careless word on the day of judgment.
That’s why it’s not enough to ask, “Was the action religious?” The Pharisees did plenty of “good” actions, but their fruit was heavy burdens on people instead of healing.
So here are the gut-check questions that bring it home:
When was the last time you complimented someone?
When was the last time you helped a friend in need?
When was the last time you made someone you don’t even know smile?
Are you serving your neighbor—or building a personal brand and calling it ministry?
Because once your value is secure in Jesus, you’re free to serve without needing applause.
And then those “small” moments—words at the grocery store, patience in a line, kindness in a hard conversation—stop being throwaway moments. They become God-filled moments with eternal weight.
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