SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: After a couple of months off, we're returning to the Gospel of Matthew this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We have about six weeks left in this Gospel account, and we're going to pick up where we left off at the end of chapter 26 and the beginning of chapter 27, but don't open your Bible there yet.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at a couple of Old Testament passages first.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 27 recounts the early morning hours of the Lord's crucifixion, and it incorporates Judas' regret for betraying the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And in telling those events, Matthew includes the last direct statement about fulfilling Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew is all about fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: He says, this was done or this was said to fulfill Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're going to look at this morning is the very last of those statements where Matthew says, this was done to fulfill Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew wants us to see that the Old Testament anticipated everything in the gospel accounts of the Lord Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_00: So that means this, Matthew expects his readers, his hearers, to have some understanding, some level of comprehension of their Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And the fulfillment in chapter 27 of Matthew requires what may be the most familiarity.
SPEAKER_00: The broadest and yet at the same time the deepest familiarity with your Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: So to help us with that, let's begin this morning with the prophet Zechariah in Zechariah chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: If you're using one of our Pew Bibles this morning, that black Bible in the seat back in front of you, you'll find it on page 798.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that is Zechariah chapter 11, very near the end of your Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a situation that takes place near the end of the Old Testament, obviously, but also just in time.
SPEAKER_00: So Israel has returned from their captivity in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: They are reestablishing their settlements in Judea.
SPEAKER_00: They are rebuilding the temple.
SPEAKER_00: They're rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: They are getting settled in their country again.
SPEAKER_00: They are getting comfortable in that place.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God says they're not anywhere close to where they should be spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: So what we're about to read is a judgment text.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I've done all of this for you, and yet you are not where you need to be.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me at Zechariah chapter 11, beginning in verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, let's start in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Thus says Yahweh, my God, become a shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: That's speaking of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: That's a the flock doomed to slaughter is a picture of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Those who buy them slaughter them and go unpunished.
SPEAKER_00: Those who sell them say, Blessed be Yahweh, I have become rich, and their own shepherds have no pity on them.
SPEAKER_00: For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, declares Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I will cause each of them to fall into the hand of his neighbor, and each into the hand of his king, and they shall crush the land, and I will deliver none from their hand.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's a comment from Zechariah the prophet, verse seven.
SPEAKER_00: So I became shepherd of the flock doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders.
SPEAKER_00: And I took two staves, one named Favor, and the other I named Union, and I tended the sheep.
SPEAKER_00: In one month I destroyed three shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: But I became impatient with them that is with the sheep, and they also detested me.
SPEAKER_00: So I said, I will not be your shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: What is to die, let it die.
SPEAKER_00: What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed, and let those who are left devour the flesh of one another.
SPEAKER_00: And so I took my f my staff, favor, and I broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples.
SPEAKER_00: So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep traders who were watching me knew that it was the word of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: And I said to them, If it seems good to you, give me my wages, but if not, keep them.
SPEAKER_00: And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: Then Yahweh said to me, Throw it to the potter, that lordly price at which I was priced by them.
SPEAKER_00: So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of Yahweh to the potter.
SPEAKER_00: Then I broke my second staff union, annuling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So you see here that going back to verse 4, God calls Zechariah the prophet to shepherd this flock of sheep that is doomed to slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: He obeys in verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: He cares for those sheep that are about to be slaughtered, as well as protecting them.
SPEAKER_00: He destroys three shepherds who are not properly shepherding the sheep.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, even though Zechariah is caring for the sheep in a righteous way, in a proper way, in verse 8, they detest him.
SPEAKER_00: That makes Zechariah leave the flock to be destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: And by verse 12, then, Zechariah tells the people to pay him his wages, whatever they think is best.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_00: And if they don't think that his work is worth compensating, they should just keep their money.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, Zechariah adds a significant amount of sarcasm with the note that they paid him 30 pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: 30 pieces of silver was a piddly amount.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a Jewish person familiar with their Torah, their law of Moses, would immediately recognize that 30 pieces of silver was the mandated price of a slave in Exodus 21, verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: The irony is that at this point in Israel's history, God's people considered God's prophet and priest of no greater value than a slave.
SPEAKER_00: So Yahweh told the prophet to take the money and throw it into the temple to the potter, which he did.
SPEAKER_00: If you look down at verses 16 and 17, in an act of judgment, Yahweh promises to raise up a wicked shepherd in place of rejected Zechariah, a judgment he says they deserve.
SPEAKER_00: Now this was an object lesson for God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Here they are receiving the blessings of God, bringing them back and settling them in their land, reestablishing their temple, giving them everything they needed, and yet now they are at the place of rejecting the shepherd that God gave them.
SPEAKER_00: They were ungrateful toward God's grace and provision, and they treated his prophet like a slave.
SPEAKER_00: Now, go back to Jeremiah, towards the front of your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: If you go all the way back to Jeremiah 18, that's page 646 in the Bible in the pew.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah chapter 18, we have a similarity here, at least in word pictures.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah chapter 18 says, the word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, arise and go down to the potter's house.
SPEAKER_00: So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Flip over to Jeremiah 19.
SPEAKER_00: Thus says Yahweh, go.
SPEAKER_00: Go and buy a potter's earthenware flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, and go out to the valley of the Son of Henam at the entry of the Potzard gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you.
SPEAKER_00: You shall say, Hear the word of Yahweh, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am bringing such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods, whom they have neither known, nor they nor their fathers, nor the kings of Judah, and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocence, and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal.
SPEAKER_00: Things which I did not command nor decree, nor did it ever come into my mind.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares Yahweh, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the Son of Hanoam, but the valley of slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: The message from God through Jeremiah was one of judgment and disaster.
SPEAKER_00: This is at least, at least a couple of hundred years before Zechariah.
SPEAKER_00: Two different time periods, yet very similar circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: The reason for the coming disaster was the worship of other gods, and not simply the worship of other gods, but the manner of worshiping other gods.
SPEAKER_00: They performed human sacrifices in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, a day would come when that valley would no longer bear the name, the valley of this son of Hanoam, but the valley of slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: Because God would slaughter his people.
SPEAKER_00: If you look down at verse 10, chapter 19, Jeremiah was to break the clay flask that he had purchased as a sign that God would break the city of Jerusalem and its people, and that valley there would become a graveyard.
SPEAKER_00: All of this would happen, God says, because they have stiffened their necks, refusing to hear my words.
SPEAKER_00: Those are hard, hard words, friends.
SPEAKER_00: These accounts are from different periods in Israel's history as God's people, but both of them recount a rejection of God's word through his prophets.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to hear Jeremiah, they don't want to hear Zechariah, they don't want to hear God's word through them.
SPEAKER_00: They reject it all, and God says, enough.
SPEAKER_00: Now we might hear these two accounts of object lessons and think them strange.
SPEAKER_00: This is the least strange of Jeremiah's object lessons.
SPEAKER_00: Taking a clay flask and breaking it isn't that strange, but it might be to our ears.
SPEAKER_00: These involve common everyday items of that culture.
SPEAKER_00: There are shepherds, pieces of silver for a slave, clay pots that break easily, the transfer of property along with the injustices of innocent people dying and the worship of false gods, all because God's people would not hear his words and obey.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's because we didn't look at it.
SPEAKER_00: That's over in Jeremiah 32.
SPEAKER_00: In Jeremiah 32, there's this strange situation where God told Jeremiah to buy a field, to act as a redeemer, like Boaz did in Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: To act as a redeemer and to buy a field from his cousin.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's strange about that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's strange about that is that Jerusalem was surrounded by the Babylonian army.
SPEAKER_00: They're about to destroy the city.
SPEAKER_00: They're wiping out the land.
SPEAKER_00: What good is property in that time?
SPEAKER_00: Well, God says, Jeremiah, I want you to spend your money as an anticipation of what I'm gonna do 70 years from now.
SPEAKER_00: When I bring people back.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes through and transfers this piece of property.
SPEAKER_00: Now, with these passages in mind, that is, we have this Zechariah serving as a shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: He's rejected, given only the price of a slave as his wages.
SPEAKER_00: We have Jeremiah who purchases a field at an odd time.
SPEAKER_00: He goes to a potter's house and buys a piece of pottery from a potter.
SPEAKER_00: Money is thrown into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment is declared.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's look at Matthew chapter 27.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 27, we'll look briefly this morning at verses 1 through 10.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 27.
SPEAKER_00: 1 through 1.
SPEAKER_00: And as you're turning there, I'll remind you that we have we are we are approaching daylight on crucifixion morning.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has been arrested, he's been interrogated in Caiaphas's house, Peter's denied him three times.
SPEAKER_00: And now when morning comes, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.
SPEAKER_00: Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: They said, What is that to us?
SPEAKER_00: See to it yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.
SPEAKER_00: But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, It's not lawful for them to put it into the treasury, since it's blood money.
SPEAKER_00: So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore that field has been called the field of blood to this day.
SPEAKER_00: Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me.
SPEAKER_00: The leaders of Israel decided to send Jesus to the Roman authority to be put to death for the contrived crime of blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: But if you know anything about your Bible, you know that Jesus is innocent.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Matthew wants us to understand here as we begin this section of Matthew 27 is that Jesus is innocent.
SPEAKER_00: And there is a massive irony in the fact that he is innocent and yet is being handed over to be condemned and crucified.
SPEAKER_00: This is the irony of the innocent.
SPEAKER_00: After being spit upon, mocked, and struck, he's now bound as he's taken to the Roman governor.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how he's bound, but probably his hands are tied behind his back, maybe in front of him.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: They're bound somehow.
SPEAKER_00: He is tied up with a rope.
SPEAKER_00: One author has speculated that it's because Jesus has to be represented as a threat.
SPEAKER_00: He says a man who needs to be bound is a man who represents a threat when he's free.
SPEAKER_00: But what did Jesus say to the chief priest?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Listen, I was sitting around in the temple teaching every day, and you didn't come and get me.
SPEAKER_00: Now you come against me with clubs and spears and swords.
SPEAKER_00: Think about the irony in this picture for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Last Sunday, Anton led us into Colossians chapter 1 and thinking about the magnificence of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the creator and the sustainer of the universe, but his claims to his position as Messiah and Savior are considered in this moment to be blasphemous.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus created these very people and placed them in their positions of authority, but they consider him to be a fraud.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gave these people life, yet in this moment they seek to take his from him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus spoke words and the universe sprang into existence.
SPEAKER_00: He commands thousands upon thousands of angels, and yet they seek to restrain him with a paltry rope.
SPEAKER_00: They believe that by killing the Lord of life, they will maintain their privileged position.
SPEAKER_00: Little do they realize that the one they seek to destroy has power over life and death.
SPEAKER_00: Makes you rethink a little bit when we try to twist God's arm, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: This is the image driving the rest of this passage.
SPEAKER_00: The God of eternity entered time and space created by his own word, and then his creation turns on him and seeks to destroy him.
SPEAKER_00: The setup for it began back in chapter 26 with Judas' actions.
SPEAKER_00: He left the Passover meal in the upper room to meet with Israel's chief priests and elders to arrange a betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: We're told in chapter 26, verse 15, that they paid Judas 30 pieces of silver for his efforts.
SPEAKER_00: But at some point, Judas realizes that Jesus would be condemned to death.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew tells us that Judas changed his mind.
SPEAKER_00: He returns to the temple where the chief priests are leaders and rulers, and he seeks to give the money back to them.
SPEAKER_00: Three verses is all it takes for Matthew to conclude any discussion about Judas.
SPEAKER_00: After three years of following Jesus, Judas's life has ended in three verses.
SPEAKER_00: If nothing else, that reminds us how swiftly life can pass and how meaningless life is apart from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But Matthew wants us to see something.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to see something specific about Judas's regretted rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: We aren't given the specifics of what Judas saw in verse 3 when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned.
SPEAKER_00: We aren't given all of the intricacies there.
SPEAKER_00: But however it happened, Judas became aware of Jesus being condemned to death.
SPEAKER_00: And that awareness, that recognition did something to Judas.
SPEAKER_00: It seems that he was at least psychologically affected by the knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: That he was responsible for Jesus being led away to death.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps, perhaps, he expected Jesus to be reprimanded or maybe beaten, or at worst imprisoned, instead of being condemned to death.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have any information telling us more than what we have here, but what we are told is that Judas changed his mind.
SPEAKER_00: There are two words in the Greek language that mean similar things.
SPEAKER_00: One word is most often translated as repent.
SPEAKER_00: That's the word that Jesus used in Matthew chapter 3, verse 2, when he said, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.
SPEAKER_00: We might say that that word is a gospel word.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word that Jesus repeatedly used when he called people to himself, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
SPEAKER_00: But Matthew used a different word here.
SPEAKER_00: It's a related word, but more general, a word that means something like regret.
SPEAKER_00: Judas was sorrowful.
SPEAKER_00: He felt bad about what he had done.
SPEAKER_00: And he wished to undo what he had done.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been there?
SPEAKER_00: Where you made a choice that you thought was a good choice.
SPEAKER_00: And then when you began to see the results of your choice, you thought, oh, I wish I wouldn't have done that.
SPEAKER_00: This is spoken of in 2 Corinthians 7.10 about the world's response to sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's grieved.
SPEAKER_00: But not in a way that leads to genuine repentance or even to salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Judas heard that Jesus would die, and he felt badly about it because he was responsible for leading Jesus to that point.
SPEAKER_00: He felt so badly about it that he wanted to undo it.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to take the money back and say, I'm sorry, I betrayed innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not guilty.
SPEAKER_00: Please take the money back and let him go.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, bud, that's on you.
SPEAKER_00: But isn't that typical human sinfulness?
SPEAKER_00: We are okay with our sin until we begin to experience the consequences.
SPEAKER_00: We see the results of it, and then we begin to see, ah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Wish I'd have done something different.
SPEAKER_00: We regret our sin when we know that it affects others or it will hurt us in some way, but for some reason we rarely see that on the front end.
SPEAKER_00: We rarely see that before we sin.
SPEAKER_00: All Judas could see at the beginning was a chance to make a little coin, a little cash from handing Jesus over to the authorities.
SPEAKER_00: He saw the temporary pleasures of sin, but once reality was apparent, he felt bad about it.
SPEAKER_00: And we've all been there, and we will all be there again.
SPEAKER_00: See, the challenge for God's people is to not sin, right?
SPEAKER_00: The challenge for us is to see the temptation for what it is as merely a lure that will lead us into the captivity to sin.
SPEAKER_00: To see sin as merely a temporary pleasure that doesn't really last and isn't going to give us anything, but that will soon pass away into regret if we choose that route.
SPEAKER_00: We need to train our hearts and minds and our eyes and our souls to see that sin is not worth the regret.
SPEAKER_00: But once we're there, because we're always there, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're always choosing sin because of the temporary pleasures, and we we find ourselves in that place of regret.
SPEAKER_00: Once we're there, there are two options once we're there.
SPEAKER_00: Once we're there dealing with the reality of sin already committed, and they are options presented to us in 2 Corinthians 7 10 that Dana prayed about earlier.
SPEAKER_00: He says, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas worldly grief produces death.
SPEAKER_00: Option one is a godly kind of grief that produces a lasting, genuine repentance without any regret.
SPEAKER_00: Option two is a worldly grief that produces death.
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you.
SPEAKER_00: Which one was Judas?
SPEAKER_00: We see him having some sense of feeling bad, sense of guilt, leading him to change his mind about his sinful action.
SPEAKER_00: And where does it lead?
SPEAKER_00: To death.
SPEAKER_00: Judas acknowledged the reality of his actions.
SPEAKER_00: He began well by recognizing his sin.
SPEAKER_00: He went to the temple to find the chief priest with whom he had agreed to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, and he said to them, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, recognizing sin in our lives is good, it's right, it's appropriate.
SPEAKER_00: Judas realized what he had done.
SPEAKER_00: He was responsible for Jesus being condemned to death, but Jesus was innocent.
SPEAKER_00: And following the line of Scripture, that makes this particular sin despicable.
SPEAKER_00: And it would be despicable to any Jewish person familiar with their Torah.
SPEAKER_00: For Deuteronomy 27, 25 says that there is a special curse for anyone who takes money to shed innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: So we begin to see a hint here that we follow through in our study next week.
SPEAKER_00: There is this emphasis on Jesus being innocent.
SPEAKER_00: And there is a curse attached to those who betray innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: To make matters worse, the chief priests respond with, so what?
SPEAKER_00: Your guilt is your problem, buddy.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, it's on you.
SPEAKER_00: Now wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: I thought the chief priests were supposed to be the mediators between God and man.
SPEAKER_00: I thought the chief priests were supposed to be those who interceded for God for people to God, lead them back to God, to bring them into the presence of God for confession and repentance.
SPEAKER_00: But no, to do any such thing would lead these chief priests into a place of guilt too, and they aren't willing to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And so with nothing left to do, Judas chose to end his life rather than to repent.
SPEAKER_00: He refused to acknowledge the truth about Jesus even at the last moment, and that is the last we hear of Judas.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not all that Matthew wants us to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew goes on.
SPEAKER_00: He tells us that the chief priest said, Yeah, we can't put this money back into the bank account.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's blood money.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we paid it out, but we can't take it back.
SPEAKER_00: That would make us guilty.
SPEAKER_00: And so Matthew says a field was purchased.
SPEAKER_00: The potter's field, traditionally known as the Valley of the Sons of Hanoam, which became known as the Valley of Slaughter in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: Or as Matthew calls it, the field of blood.
SPEAKER_00: All of this, Matthew says, fulfilled what the prophet Jeremiah spoke.
SPEAKER_00: And it's there that we really begin to focus in on what Matthew wants us to see.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the plan of divine providence.
SPEAKER_00: There are three things that Matthew wants us to take away.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, innocent blood was betrayed.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, a price was set to purchase innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: And number three, the price of blood became the price of the potter's field.
SPEAKER_00: Note Matthew's emphasis on the innocence.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember how we read in Jeremiah that he condemned the slaughter of the innocent?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4 says that Judas betrays innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 24, that we'll see next week, Pilate is innocent of Jesus' innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, this didn't just happen.
SPEAKER_00: God had spoken of this event in big and small ways all throughout Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew says the killing of the innocent people in Jeremiah's time was a small picture of the ultimate killing of the innocent one.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did not die because he was guilty.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures say that he who knew no sin became sin for us.
SPEAKER_00: He was not condemned and handed over to the Romans because he deserved judgment.
SPEAKER_00: He was thoroughly innocent.
SPEAKER_00: Innocent blood was betrayed, and a price was set to purchase innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: The chief priests call this blood money.
SPEAKER_00: They took the offerings of Israel to give it to Judas to betray Jesus, knowing all along that they would seek his destruction.
SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't be quite right to receive those 30 pieces of silver back into the offering plate when they had initially been used to hire a hitman.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, in this situation, the hitmen merely led them to their desired target, and the Romans did the dirty work.
SPEAKER_00: What makes this providential is the amount of money involved and even the action.
SPEAKER_00: The price for Judas' betrayal was 30 pieces of silver, and he cast that money back into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And that amount, Matthew records, fulfills Scripture, and it's the passage from Zechariah, not Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: What was Zechariah's comment?
SPEAKER_00: Give me my wages if you think I deserve them.
SPEAKER_00: And what did they give him?
SPEAKER_00: Thirty pieces of silver, that lordly price at which I was priced by them.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet and spiritual leader Zechariah was worth no more than the price of a slave.
SPEAKER_00: So also, the prophet, God's only begotten, was valued as no more than a slave.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew knows, too, that any Jewish reader would recognize 30 pieces of silver being paid out by Jewish people and then being thrown into the temple at the command of God.
SPEAKER_00: And by playing on that thought, Matthew says that even the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas and the throwing them into the temple is not a coincidence.
SPEAKER_00: God had spoken through the Old Testament prophets in a way that anticipated all of these details.
SPEAKER_00: God used ordinary events to prepare the way for his son.
SPEAKER_00: Even the price of the field.
SPEAKER_00: And the purchase of the field.
SPEAKER_00: And the renaming of the field.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew tells us the priests and the elders purchased a piece of land outside of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Best guess is that at the time it was used by potters to dig up clay for their work.
SPEAKER_00: That purchased land was for a cemetery for strangers who died in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That action, Matthew says, also points to the fulfillment of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: In the passage that we did not look at, Jeremiah chapter 32, verses 8 and 9, Jeremiah buys a field.
SPEAKER_00: In Jeremiah 18, Jeremiah goes to a potter's house.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 19, he purchases a vessel from the potter.
SPEAKER_00: He takes it out to the valley of the son of Hanoam, and there he breaks the jar as a picture of God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And that valley is traditionally associated with the location of the field purchased with Judas's 30 silver pieces.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of a potter and purchasing a field is from Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: And that, Matthew says, is evidence that God spoke through the prophets to picture what would happen to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew references those elements from Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: But he's pulling in pictures from Jeremiah and Zechariah.
SPEAKER_00: But he only mentions Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: What's up with that?
SPEAKER_00: What's a standard method of Jewish writing?
SPEAKER_00: It was an ordinary procedure to refer to more than one location in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: But to mention specifically only one.
SPEAKER_00: And the one that's specifically mentioned is the one that's more obscure.
SPEAKER_00: Often because it held greater importance for the writer to highlight, but people would not necessarily pick up on it.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone would remember Zechariah's 30 pieces of silver given to him as a rejection for his shepherding.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone would remember that he took those 30 pieces of silver and threw it into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's in essence a direct quote.
SPEAKER_00: How can you forget that?
SPEAKER_00: But the more obscure ones are these little pieces from Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: A potter.
SPEAKER_00: A field.
SPEAKER_00: That would be renamed the Valley of Slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew says, You're gonna know the Zechariah one.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to know that God didn't just promise this in Zechariah, he promised it in Jeremiah too.
SPEAKER_00: The people of Jeremiah's time and those of Zechariah's day rejected the word of God through those prophets and came under God's judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Similarly, Israel rejected not only a prophet, but the prophet, and not merely a prophet, but as Matthew says in chapter 1, Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: And as Jeremiah and Zechariah suffered innocently at the hands of their people, so would Emmanuel, Jesus, the one who would save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: In the fulfillment of Scripture, then, Jesus' blood purchased our redemption.
SPEAKER_00: But his blood was purchased first.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' blood was purchased.
SPEAKER_00: But the providence is that Scripture is fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' death was the ransom, the price paid to free those enslaved to sin.
SPEAKER_00: His blood was purchased to destroy him.
SPEAKER_00: Money was given out to be rid of him.
SPEAKER_00: But in the providence of God, he worked it all for good, for Jesus paid the infinite ransom with his blood.
SPEAKER_00: For it was the innocent one who paid for the guilty.
SPEAKER_00: In his innocence, he paid the price to release the guilty from their judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, for those who come to Christ by faith, there is now no condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: Or as Peter said it, since you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to every person's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing, knowing that you were ransomed out of your feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: As though he were a perfect Passover lamb without blemish or spot.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we come before you as our perfect Passover Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: You are the one who was offered in our place.
SPEAKER_00: You are the one whose body was broken, whose blood was shed.
SPEAKER_00: You, the innocent one, presented to the justice of the sovereign judge, accepted as the perfect atonement for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And so all who come before you believe in the power of the blood.
SPEAKER_00: Just as those ancient Israelites would slaughter the lamb and paint the blood on the doorposts, trusting in the word of God that the blood would affect their salvation, so too we by faith come to you, trusting that the blood of this innocent lamb, not like silver or gold, but the blood as of a lamb is effective to purchase our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So we rest our trust in Him alone and in the purpose of God before the foundation of the world that we would be reconciled to God through his blood.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord Jesus, we as your people come and we bow before you in thanks, and not just in thanksgiving, but in worship of what you've done on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: It's to you we give thanks, and it's you we honor.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.