The Wage of a Disciple of Death

Introduction

The bloody death of Judas Iscariot is the beginning of the bell toll for an unbelieving nation who rejected their God long ago. It remains a warning for any Christian, church, or institution which wanders from God though it keeps up appearances; they are traitors whom God will judge, and this should give us a healthy fear that keeps our hearts lowly and steadfast.

Jesus Condemned and Judas Regrets

Our text begins around 3 hours after Peter heard the rooster crow and ran away in bitter weeping, as we saw last week. While the chief priests had already decided on death for Jesus in the trial the night before, and indeed had this as their plan long before that mock trial, they likely finalize this decision in a private meeting with the High Priest. However, since they lack the official authority to carry out an execution without the permission of the Roman governer, they now have to convince him of their cause. As we will see, the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate has little interest in Jesus’ religious claims; to him, that is a simple religious matter that certainly does not deserve a Roman-sanctioned death penalty. So the elders will try to stress the Davidic claim of Messiahship, making the case that the claim to be the Messiah is treason against Rome. They will even go as far as to say that they have no king but caesar, which is not only a denial of the kingship of Jesus, but seemingly a denial of any Messiah whatsoever.

In verse three there is a unique interuption in Matthew’s storytelling that exists in no other gospel account, although Acts 1 does also give an account of the death of Judas. Judas sees that Jesus has been condemned by the chief priests and he is filled with remorse. Although this can sometimes mean repentance, it isn’t necessarily real repentance. Judas is deeply disturbed by an overwhelming sense of guilt and an awareness of his responsibility in taking part in what he can see is going to end in the death of the man he had called Lord for the last few years.

What follows is a dark irony rooted in OT themes and a fulfilment of God’s judgement on the rulers of Israel which had been prophecied hundreds of years before this moment.

The Fulfilment of the Scriptures

Now again, why does Matthew choose to interrupt the narrative of Jesus death to talk about what happened to Judas, especially when no other gospel does this? Remember that, as Matthew is mainly writing to Jewish readers, one of his majour themes is the fulfilment of the Scriptures. This is clearly the case for including this story of Judas here, as verse 9 tells us. But how exactly is this a fulfilment of the Scriptures? And why does Matthew seem to attribute a passage in Zechariah to Jeremiah?

To understand this passage and the meaning it has in light of OT Scriptures, we again need to understand how Rabbis at the time saw the fulfillment of Scripture, and how Matthew sees it. It is most common today for fulfilment to be seen in a very flat, one to one kind of way. Scripture A speaks of event B. Event B happens, fulfilling Scripture A. However, this was not how Rabbis at the time, and certainly not how Matthew, often sees prophecy. While some prophecies do refer to specific events, for Matthew and many Jews at the time, the Scriptures could also be fulfilled through themes. For example, when Matthew tells us in Matthew 2:15 that Jesus going to Egypt was fulfilling Hosea 11:1, he was aware that Hosea is not talking about the Messiah, but about Israel coming out of Egypt. Matthew is not saying that Hosea is talking specifically about the event of Jesus’ parents fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod’s soldiers, but rather that Jesus is fulfilling a biblical theme of God calling his ‘Son’ out of Egypt. In a culture that saw time as going in cycles rather than a straight line, this makes a lot of sense, and these were the people God revealed his Scriptures to.

The second thing we have to understand is that, when you were quoting Scripture to set a fulfilled theme rather than a direct correlation between a specific passage and a specific event it fulfills, you would often use more than one Scripture verse. It was common to attribute the entire quotation to either the more important of the two passages for fulfillment, or the less obvious reference so that your readers would know all of the passages you are referring to.

With all that said, Matthew is doing just that. Matthew is not saying that the death of Judas is a single event fulfilling a specific passage of Scripture, but that it brings to light common Old Testament themes which are about to show themselves. Matthew then references two passages, Zechariah 11:13 and Jeremiah 19:1-13. He names Jeremiah because it is the less obvious of the two references. Both of these passages tell a story of a prophet that may seem very different from the story we see infront of us today, but carry the same theme.

This theme is simple: the end has come for God’s unfaithful people. The covenant is over, and destruction is right around the corner. Why? Because of the blood on their hands and their consistent betrayal of the Lord their God.

Two Prophets

In Jeremiah 19:1-13, the prophet is told to buy a clay flask made by a potter and take it with the religious leaders, elders and priests, to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. This valley is infamous as it was a place where idolotrous Israelites used to sacrifice their children to Molech and Baal. It was called Gehenna; a word Jesus used to describe hell. It was also the sight of large clay deposits, giving it another title: the potter’s field.

In this field, Jeremiah convays to the religious leaders the destruction which God is about to bring on them. This field which they filled with the blood of innocent children. So then, the valley will become known as the valley of slaughter, and Jerusalm will be a place of horror where people will fall by the sword and will even resort to cannibalism in their desparation.

To push the point home, God tells Jeremiah to smash the clay vessel he brought with him as a sign of how God will break the faithless people so that they cannot be repaired. All this is shown to those leaders of the people who should have been guiding them to the Lord and instead have allowed such bloodshed to happen. They will see in their days the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian empire, just as those in Jesus’ day will witness it from the Roman empire. A replay of events is unfolding.

The second passage referenced here is Zechariah 11:13. We have already seen prophecy fulfilled from this prophet, but here we get another story where God had the prophet give a physical demonstration. In this one, the prophet Zechariah is told to work as a shepherd for a flock “doomed to be slaughtered by sheep traders.” As a shepherd, he takes two staffs: one representing God’s covenant favour on Israel and the other representing the unity of God’s people. He is there to drive away the shepherds who have no pity on the sheep who are being killed and fleeced for riches.

But pretty quickly, the prophet gets tired as the sheep hate him and refuse to be led by him. He quits his shepherding and leaves the flock to devour one another and he breaks the staff Favour, which represents the annulling of the covenant God make with the people. He then akss the other shepherds, who represent the rulers and religious leaders of Israel, for his wages. They give him, you guessed it, thrity pieces of silver: the price of a slave according to the law.

Zechariah 11:13 ESV

Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter.

The “lordly price” is said with irony: God is mocking their pathetic tribute to him while they get rich off of his people.

Now here there is a translation problem. The word “potter” is literally “caster” and can refer either to a potter or to a person who casts metal. So the Greek translation common in Jesus’ day translated it as if the money is being thrown to a metal worker. There is also a possibility that the word means treasury and the Revised Standard Version and some others translate it this way.

The idea is to show the way God sees the corruption, both of the rulers of the people of Israel and the people themselves. God would save his people from these corrupt rulers, but the people themselves are corrupt and will seeon turn and devour one another. All the while, the rulers pretend to worship God will paltry offering which God does not care for like he cares for justice, righteousness, and faithfulness. If they will not have their God, God will leave them to their own destruction.

Judas the Unknowing Prophet.

All of this background makes Judas’ conversation and actions full of OT meaning. Judas has acted with corruption and now stands guilty of bloodshed, like those who sacrificed their children to Baal and Molech. He comes to the Temple to the religious leaders, to the men who are supposed to lead God’s people away from bloodshed and wickedness. The only problem is that they themselves are the authors of this murderous plot. They do not deny that Judas has this guilt, but their answer to him in verse 4 shows that they deny any resonsibility for this bloodshed. Though these religious leaders prided themselves on being so different from the anscestors who murdered the prophets, their true colours are shown. They have no interest in true worship, no interest in righteousness. They will engage in murder, step back, and claim they have done no wrong.

Judas responds by throwing the money into the temple. Now, this may seem confusing. After all, Zechariah the prophet threw the money into the temple and he was not guilty of corruption. This is true, but here there is a sense in which Judas has become an unknowing prophet himself, acting out this OT theme. The throwing of the money means the same thing; God’s rejection of their pethetic religion which they use to mask their bloodthirsty lives.

Now it seems that Matthew plays on the Hebrew word for “potter”. One option is to translate it ‘treasury’, however ill-gotten gain was illegal to put into the treasury according to Deuteronomy 23:18. The rulers seem quite blind to the fact that calling this “blood money”, money used to pay off a murderer, they are ignoring the fact that they were the ones who paid Judas; they cannot escape the bloodguilt of their actions. They will try. The thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave for which our Lord was sold, will not go into the treasury as a witness against them. Instead, they will use it to buy a field outside of Jerusalem to bury gentiles who died in Jerusalem. A place known as the Valley of Hinnom, A place where much innocent blood had been spilt, a true field of blood. A place with a name synonymous with hell itself, and a place where the potters got their clay.

And so the money does not go to the temple treasury but to the potter from whom they bought the field, and so the scriptures still apply to them and the money remains a witness of their guilt before God. This valley of bloodshed, this valley of hell, is a witness that they themselves will die outside of God’s covenant, like a foreigner. Acts 1:18-19 seems to imply that Judas killed himself here, with church tradition saying that Judas hung himself from a tree at the edge of the valley, the branch broke and he fell far down into a bloody mess in a field of blood for those outside of God’s people. Suicide was a sign of ultimate rejection by God in the OT, which we see in the life of King Saul. Not that Judas couldn’t have theoretically sought and attained forgiveness, but that his hard heart was so far gone that repentence was impossible for him. Without true repentence, there was nothing but an expectation of judgement which led him to do what he did. Judas may have chosen this spot for that very reason when he heard what the Pharisees had done with his money, seeing himself as he was: cut off from God’s people because of his bloodshed. But he is not the only one, those chief priests and all the unfaithful in Jerusalem would, metaphorically speaking, die in such a way: as an outsider of the Kingdom of God.

A Dire Warning

So essentially, we see that Matthew uses the story of Judas as a showing of how OT themes were coming to their fulfilment as Christ establishes the New Covenant. And yet, we are left asking how this all relates to us. Such a dark dive into the destruction of the unfaithful may not seem worth the time, but it is. This theme exists not only as a doom for the unfaithful living in that time, but as a warning for the church today. The author of Hebrews speaks this relationship between us and the unfaithful Israelites in this way Heb 4:2

Hebrews 4:2 ESV

For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

Hebrews 4:11 ESV

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

Being under a covenant of grace by faith, we should be under no false assumptions. God cut off these unbelieving people; he doomed the conspirators to a field of blood although they were the priests of God. This is not to speak against the redemption that there is for even those like Peter who publicly denied Christ three times. The existence of this mercy, rather than making us spiritually lazy, should make us all the more eager and careful to obtain it since we know what is at stake if we do not.

So, while this text exemplifies God’s abandonment of the consistently unfaithful, it serves as a warning for us.

A warning against apostacy and hypocrisy - Judas was both of these things as we know from John that Judas was a theif while he was a disciple. These two traits go hand in hand, with hypocrisy being the quickest way to become an apostate. Christ has given us the way to life by grace through faith, a faith that gives ourselves over to him. Unbelief, however, gives him over to ourselves, subjects God to our whims, desires, and plans. A hypocrite can only stand among the people of God for so long. Eventually, they will be known, and their destruction will come quickly.

A warning against fruilessness - As the author of Hebrews tells his readers in Hebrews 6:7-8

Hebrews 6:7–8 NIVUK

Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.

The fruit of the unbelieving nation and its rulers was clear: bloodshed, idolatry, injustice, and unbelief. God endures such people for a time with patience, in hopes that they will repent and bear fruit. But every rainfall of blessing is a step closer to their doom. Fruitless branches are eventually cut off to make way for fruitful ones Rom 11:20

Romans 11:20 ESV

They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear.

True faith is fruitful. Take care that you are using the grace of God for a fruitful service of him, not as a spiritual freeloader.

A warning against injustice.

A warning against the wrong kind of repentence.

2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV

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

Hopeless grief denies the Gospel, and leads to death. Grief which leads us to the feet of Christ in submission for the grace and forgiveness we need leads to life.

Encouragement for the lowly in heart.

Judas was not lowly in heart, but rather faithless in despair. A lowly heart, like Peter’s would be, looks back to God in faith that he is full of mercy and forgiveness just as he promises.

Encourage in yourselves a lowly heart that draws you to God in repentence often, that relies on his grace always, and that fears the hardness of sin.

Hebrews 3:12–14 NIVUK

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.