Matthew 27:1-10

Matthew  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
0 ratings
· 201 views
Notes
Transcript

Introduction

Jesus Delivered to Pilate

27 When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. 2 And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.

Judas Hangs Himself

3 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, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” 5 And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. 6 But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. 8 Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. 9 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, 10 and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”

So, here in chapter 27 we transition away from Jesus’ condemnation before the Jewish Sanhedrin to his trial before Pilate. Jesus was tried over the course of the night by the High Priests Annas and Caiaphas, and eventually the rest of the Jewish Council later at sunrise. It appeared to have been somewhat of an informal meeting by the council, in fact, many scholars argue that it was unlikely that the entire council was present, at least not at the outset, when Jesus was first brought to Annas and Caiaphas in the middle of the night. The meeting was also held in secret, under the cover of darkness. It was also Jewish law that a verdict could not be reached in less than a 24 hour period from the trial date, yet Jesus was convicted by morning, delivered to Pilate before lunch, and crucified before sundown.
But, as I mentioned before, under Roman occupation the Jews couldn’t carry out capital punishment on their own. It was their Roman overlords who had reserved that right for themselves, so if they wanted Jesus killed they were going to have to convince Rome to do it.

Pilate the governor

And, so we read there again in verses 1 and 2,

27 When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. 2 And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.

Now, Pilate didn’t reside in Jerusalem, instead he lived in Caesarea, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea (a city built by Herod the Great), and he typically only visited Jerusalem during certain festivals or holy days in the event that these celebrations lead to an uprising or revolt. He was the governor, or prefect, and his job was to carry out the law on behalf of Rome, and his jurisdiction was the region of Judea. It was his job to keep the peace, and so at the time of Jesus’ trial Pilate was in town keeping an eye on the events of Passover.
And so we’re told there in verse 2 that the chief priests “bound [Jesus] and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.” Now, Pilate was also known as a ruthless man with no regard for the Jews or their religious practices, and he especially hated their religious leaders. By his estimation they were a thorn in his flesh and a hindrance to his governance.
The famous Jewish historian Josephus writes that he brought effigies (images or sculptures) of Caesar into Jerusalem for the first time, which was forbidden by Jewish law, and he did so without the knowledge of the people or the religious leaders, under the cover of darkness. Josephus records that he was merciless, often preferring that his prisoners suffer, than be condemned to death, quoting Pilate Josephus writes, “but I do it, that by being harassed with the present calamity, they may undergo greater misery.”
At one point Pilate stole Jewish offerings made for the poor to build an aqueduct, “and when the population of Jerusalem rioted in protest, he sent soldiers who killed many” of them (D.A. Carson, Mathew Commentary, Matthew 27). And in the Gospel of Luke we’re told in chapter 13, in passing, that Pilate killed a bunch of Galileans in Jerusalem who were offering sacrifices during one of their festivals.
So, my point is that Pilate was a wicked and ruthless ruler and he had no genuine concern for his subjects, only that his own life and place in Roman government remained intact. Which is why his relationship with the Jewish Sanhedrin would have been inherently strained and tenuous. In fact, both parties undoubtedly thought of one another as enemies. Therefore, for the Jews to even deliver Jesus over to Pilate would have carried with it a certain risk of escalating tensions, especially during Passover. But then, it’s at this point, that Matthew interrupts the story, and he does so in order to record Judas’ end, so, unfortunately, we’ll have to pickup where we left off with Pilate in our next time.

Why the story of Judas?

Now, Matthew is the only Gospel writer to record what happened to Judas after Jesus’ arrest, and the last time we saw him was when he was leading a party of armed soldiers to capture Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane. And one of the questions I think we should ask ourselves is, why does Matthew make the effort to record this story about Judas here, and why now?
Now, obviously, we can’t read Matthew’s mind, but we do have have 28 chapters of his book to take into consideration. I’ve mentioned it before, but whenever you’re studying the Bible you should always take into consideration the author’s intended audience, in other words, who is Matthew writing to? Who does Matthew have in mind when he writes his Gospel narrative? Well, it’s almost universally agreed that Matthew’s audience was primarily Jewish, that he’s writing to Jews about Jesus. And he intends to demonstrate to his readers that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah and King. Therefore, one aspect of his Gospel that stands out is that he’s constantly referencing the OT. Matthew’s Gospel is overtly Jewish, with the intent of reaching a Jewish audience, therefore, he goes to great lengths to connect Jesus’ life and ministry to the OT, especially the OT prophets. The central theme of his book is rooted in promise and fulfillment.
And I think it’s for this reason, that we have verses 3-10 planted here in chapter 27, this story about Judas, because notice how verse 9 begins,

9 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah,

Matthew pauses in order to communicate to his readers, again, how the ministry of Jesus is yet another fulfillment of past prophecies. So as we walk through this text keep that in mind, understand what Matthew’s is doing.

Segway to Judas

Starting at verse 3 Matthew finds an opportunity to connect Judas to Jesus’ ministry as the Messiah, to demonstrate how Judas’ betrayal was a fulfillment of OT prophecy. Read with me, again, starting in verse 3,

3 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, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”

Notice there in verse 3, how Matthew uses Jesus’ condemnation by the Jewish Sanhedrin as a segway into his story about Judas, “when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver.” Matthew sees the opportunity for dropping Judas into the story again and he goes for it.

Deceitfulness of sin

And then we read there that Judas 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.” In other words, he’s realized the gravity of what he had done. That he had betrayed innocent blood for a measly thirty pieces of silver. He realized the enormity of what he had done. And isn’t this precisely how sin works, how temptation clouds our spiritual faculties of discernment so as to downplay the seriousness of our sin, to believe we can get away with it, to think that we can hide it, that we can manage it, or to think that it won’t hurt anyone, or that we can avoid its consequences, at least until later when we feel the overwhelming sense of guilt that accompanies it. And even when we’ve persisted in sin, and have become desensitized to it, when external consequences finally come down upon us we become overwhelmed with dread. We wish that what we did could be undone. And this is precisely what Judas felt, an oppressive sense of guilt, that he believed could only be removed if his actions were undone, if he could just rewind the whole situation, but the reality was that he couldn’t. His actions could not be undone.
Now, one of the defining marks of a Christian is not that he doesn’t sin, but that he takes his sin seriously, that he doesn’t take his sin lightly. That he flees from sin, that he doesn’t make provision for it, that his desire is to live in the light and not in darkness, that he lives a life marked by repentance. Whereas the world trivializes sin and sees no need for repentance. This is also why the Gospel is so inherently offensive to the world, because it’s a message that calls men to repentance, men who think they have nothing to repent of. But even unbelievers experience guilt, even unbelievers regret their decisions and wish that they could be undone, but we must also realize that without repentance to God, and availing themselves of his mercy in Christ, they will never be relieved of their guilt and sorrow.

Universal Guilt

But notice how Judas tries to alleviate his guilt anyway, there in verse 3,

he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”

He tries to give back the money, to abdicate responsibility for what he has done, but no matter what he does he’ll never be able to rid himself of the guilt. And this is the inescapable reality for those who are not in Christ, apart from him they stand condemned, they stand guilty before God. However, the glory of the Gospel is, of course, that God gave his Son as an atonement for sin, that all who repent and trust in Christ will be washed, that they will have their sins forgiven, that they will no longer stand condemned, and they will no longer be saddled with guilt. Yet, this is not the path that Judas followed, while Judas experienced remorse there is no repentance.

Remorse and repentance

So, there’s a distinction we see in Scripture, that universally, all people can feel guilt and remorse for their sin, sorrow for their sin, but that there’s a distinction between sorrow that leads to repentance and a sorrow that leads to death. In Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, in chapter 7, verse 10 he writes,

10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

In other words, there are two types of grief, a grief that leads to repentance and faith in Christ, without regret, and a grief that merely produces death. And unfortunately, we find that Judas’ grief did not lead to a godly repentance.
In fact, continuing there in verse 4, his guilt only escalated when the chief priests responded,

“What is that to us? See to it yourself.”

In other words, “that’s your problem, not ours.”

5 And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.

His guilt had lead him to such despair that he hung himself. And it’s awful to think about the amount of despair that the burden of guilt causes everyday for billions of people around the world, and so many people, like Judas, doing everything they can to remove their guilt, and knowing that we have the answer to that despair, that we have the remedy to their sorrow, that all of their guilt can be removed, that they can have peace with God. And it’s even more painful to see the Gospel trampled under foot, that people would rather bear their own guilt than repent of their sin (which is testimony of the hardness of man’s heart), but on the other hand we know that there are many in our lifetime who will have that burden removed because of our faithfulness to persist in evangelizing and praying for the lost, knowing that no matter hard the heard, that it is God who saves and that he can save unto the uttermost.

Swallowing a camel

Let’s continue reading there in verse 6,

6 But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. 8 Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

So, all of a sudden the chief priests become concerned with following the law. On one hand they’ll unlawfully condemn their own Messiah to death and take no personal responsibility for it, but on the other hand they’ll recognize this as blood money that can’t be put into the treasury. Now, the hypocrisy is so obvious that it’s hard to believe they can’t see it, and it reminds me of just a few chapters earlier during Jesus’ scathing woes against the scribes and Pharisees back in chapter 23 when he says in verse 23,

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

So instead of putting the 30 pieces of silver back in the treasury Matthew says they decided to purchase a potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. In other words, they’re going to put these ill-gotten gains to good use, they’re going to purchase a potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. They’re going to do something that would be perceived as public good with the proceeds. However, Matthew tells us that this potter’s field eventually comes back to bite them. He says there in verse 8 that the field would eventually become known as the Field of Blood. That it would become a public reminder of their treachery, becoming known as the Field of Blood because it had been purchased with blood money.
And while we don’t know the precise location of this Field of Blood (Ah-kel-dah-mah) we know that it was located south of Jerusalem where the Kidron Valley meets the Hinnom Valley. It’s any area that used to have a large deposit of clay that would have been used by potters who manufactured clay pots and vessels to sell to those who lived in Jerusalem. Scholars speculate that the land may have been less expensive to purchase since living in that area would have been less desirable due of the heavy clay deposits.

Fulfillment

Then we come to what I believe is Matthew’s primary purpose for this story, to demonstrate yet again, how the the life and ministry of Jesus is a fulfillment of OT prophecy, even in the details of Judas’ betrayal and the purchase of this potter’s field. So what I want you to see is how Matthew intends for his readers to connect certain OT prophecies with this particular moment in Jesus betrayal.
Now, sometimes these connections are easy to see, in fact, you don’t even have to be too familiar with the OT texts to see them. Some of the more common fulfillment texts that come to mind, that most of us are familiar with, are from Isaiah 53 describing the suffering servant which portrays Jesus’ humiliation and crucifixion, or from Isaiah 35 when Jesus describes himself to John the Baptist who’s in prison that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. These are OT prophecies that Jesus is fulfilling that seem pretty obvious to us when we read them.

Understanding fulfillment

But there are many others that I think we’re more prone to choke on, and that are inherently harder for us to see the connection between the OT prophecy and what the NT writer is applying it to. And I think verses 9-10 are an example of this for most of us. Now, there are a couple of reasons for this, 1) as Westerners I think our inherent understanding of prophecy and fulfillment is pretty limited in our current context, primarily because we don’t really have a modern literary genre that parallels biblical prophecy, so we typically approach biblical prophecy without an understanding of how it’s supposed to work, for example, I suspect most of us think of prophesy and fulfillment as merely a one to one correlation, where the word of prophesy is given, like the Bengals are going to win the Super Bowl in 2023, and then in 2023 the Bengals win the Super Bowl. And if we come to the pages of Scripture with this deficient view of prophecy and prophetic literature we’ll probably become frustrated pretty quick.
Now, the second reason is because we have such a limited familiarity with the OT and the biblical history, whereas someone like Matthew was steeped in it, that it was the only thing he knew, so when he starts applying prophetic texts he often goes beyond a mere one to one correlation of one text applying to one specific event, to drawing out broader typologies (Messianic themes) from the prophetic writers and showing his readers how those types and shadows (those themes) are being fulfilled by Jesus and his ministry. And even more than that, Matthew takes the liberty here in Matthew 27 of weaving multiple themes from multiple authors to draw out the fulfillment. And Matthew here is drawing from all of the literature that his Jewish audience would have been familiar with and connecting the dots for them, and in the process he mixes several OT texts together.
It says there in verse 9 that he’s quoting from the prophet Jeremiah when he says,

“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, 10 and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”

Now, upon closer examination we realize that he’s quoting from at least two sources, the prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah. And from these two texts Matthew wants us to see how the pattern of apostasy and rejection that were often present in Israel, find their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus’ rejection, more specifically, how to them he wasn’t worth anymore than 30 pieces of silver, and that their purchase of the potter’s field pointed to a future judgement against their nation.

Jeremiah & Zechariah

So, in verses 9-10 there are two major components, 1) the thirty pieces of silver set as the value of which Jesus is worth to the Jews, and 2) the potter’s field which is a symbol of death and destruction to the nation who will be buried as like strangers in judgement. And these two components come from two prophetic stories in Jeremiah 19 and Zechariah 11.
In Zechariah 11 we’re given a picture of several shepherds who represent Israel’s leaders who are slaughtering the sheep, so God commands Zechariah to shepherd this flock who have been marked for slaughter, but Zechariah discovers that not only are the other shepherds corrupt, but the sheep detest him as well. Therefore, the Lord decides to have no more pity on them, and Zechariah leaves, and the other shepherds pay him off with thirty pieces of silver, the meager price for a slave, so God tells Zechariah to throw back the thirty pieces of silver into the Temple to their shame. The Lord then proclaims that he’ll bring judgement against Israel and her leaders.
Matthew intends for us to see how this same kind of rejection has played out in the life and ministry of Jesus, particularly by the chief priests paying Judas’ thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus, demonstrating that to them Jesus was only worth the price of a slave, just like the shepherd in Zechariah’s story. The leaders of Israel hated him and the people despised him and so they pay him off with 30 pieces of silver to get rid of him.
Then in Jeremiah 19 the prophet is told to take a potter’s vessel to the Valley of Hinnom for an object lesson (the same place as the potter’s field described here in Matthew 27 that the chief priests purchased with blood money). Jeremiah is instructed to preach judgement against Israel for forsaking Yahweh and filling Jerusalem with the blood of innocents. That this place would no longer be called the Valley of Hinnom but the Valley of Slaughter, because God would break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel.
Matthew is saying to his readers that the rejection of Jesus was like the rejection of Yahweh in Jeremiah 19, that Jerusalem’s leaders followed in the footstep of their predecessors by shedding innocent blood, and that their treachery lead also to a polluted field, a graveyard of death, this potter’s field that has become known as the Field of Blood to this day.
So, again, Matthew means to draw these OT prophecies and stories out to the forefront of their minds that they might see that these texts find their ultimate fulfillment in the rejection and disregard of their Messiah. That their rejection of God and his prophets is most clearly pictures in Jesus himself.

Conclusion

Now, as we close I want to point out again, that this 30 pieces of silver, what would have been the price of a slave in the OT, was all that was necessary for Judas to turn Jesus over to the authorities, a mere 30 pieces of silver. That’s how worthless Jesus was to him, and how little the chief priests and scribes had to put on his head for bounty. The most important and infinitely valuable person in the universe was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Therefore we should ask ourselves, how much is he worth to me? Is he the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field of which I’m willing to sell everything I have to posses?

Prayer

​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more
Copyright 2024 Logos Bible SoftwareFeatures|Pricing|Privacy|Terms of Use|Support