A Story of the Heart
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Vignettes
Definition in Photography
A vignette in photography refers to a technique where the edges of a photo are darker or less saturated than the center. This effect can be used intentionally to draw the viewer's attention to the subject in the center, creating a sense of depth and focus.
Definition in Literature
In literature, a vignette focuses on a single powerful moment, rather than the full narrative to capture the moment.
Let me give you a couple of examples:
Example 1: The old house stood on a hill, its paint peeling like sunburnt skin. The windows were dark eyes staring out at the world, and the wind whispered secrets through the overgrown garden.
Example 2: The coffee shop smelled of roasted beans and old books. Steam rose from the mugs, and the soft murmur of conversations filled the air.
Matthew gives us a few vignettes as a part of the larger narrative of Jesus’s final days leading up to the cross.
We are going to take a look at three of these as we look at the heart of three different groups of people.
Let’s take a look at these three vignettes this morning.
1 When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples,
2 “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”
3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas,
4 and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.
5 But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”
6 Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,
7 a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table.
8 And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste?
9 For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.”
10 But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.
11 For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.
12 In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial.
13 Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”
14 Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests
15 and said, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.
16 And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.
Pray
In Matthew 26 we have several vignettes that are all little pieces of the whole narrative.
Examples of vignette‑like scenes in Matthew 26
Each of these stands alone as a complete moment:
The plot to kill Jesus (vv. 1–5)
A brief scene of the religious leaders scheming.
The anointing at Bethany (vv. 6–13)
A self‑contained moment of devotion and controversy.
Judas arranging the betrayal (vv. 14–16)
A short, dark negotiation.
The Last Supper (vv. 17–30)
A complete scene with its own emotional arc.
Gethsemane (vv. 36–46)
A focused moment of anguish and prayer.
The arrest (vv. 47–56)
A dramatic, action‑centered scene.
The trial before the Sanhedrin (vv. 57–68)
A courtroom‑style vignette.
Peter’s denial (vv. 69–75)
A tightly framed emotional moment.
Each scene is short, vivid, and self‑contained — classic vignette characteristics. (From Copilot)
We are only going to look at the first three as we look at the heart of these groups of people.
You will see that there are three types of people in these three different scenes.
Some Who Wish to Eliminate Jesus
Some Who Pretend to Follow Jesus
Some Who Wish to Worship Jesus
We are going to flip the last two for the sake of clarity this morning, but to begin, let’s first set the scene.
Setting the Scene
Matthew sets the scene for us by telling us that Jesus has finished saying all of these things - the immediate teachings on the destruction of the Temple and the return of the Son of Man, as well as all of His teachings.
Jesus is now finished with the instruction phase of his ministry in large part. He will give some private teaching to His disciples around the table celebrating Passover and in the Garden, but publicly at least, He is done teaching.
Notice the timing of the scene. Jesus knows what is about to happen to Him. He declares what will happen to Him.
Passover is coming and it is only fitting that He must die at Passover as the ultimate Passover Lamb that the Passover was pointing to all these hundreds of years that the Jewish people celebrated it.
By telling us that after two days that passover was coming, we know that this prophecy was given on Tuesday.
What Jesus is telling us is that what God has ordained to happen is going to happen. Keep that in your mind as we move forward.
1. Those Who Wish to Eliminate Jesus (vv.1-5)
1. Those Who Wish to Eliminate Jesus (vv.1-5)
Look closer at vv 3-5
3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas,
4 and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.
5 But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”
I can’t help but see a contrast in these verses.
The leaders of the people, the chief priests and the elders, are wanting to get rid of Jesus.
They are the ones that should have been able to recognize Him as the Messiah that was promised in Scripture. The problem is that they didn’t care about the Messiah coming. In fact, they didn’t really want Him to come at all.
Notice anything interesting about where they were gathered vs. where Jesus would often be gathered?
They were in the palace of the High Priest. Jesus was most often with the poor and the outcast.
They liked the life of privilege and luxury and the status that they had. They didn’t want to give that up to anyone, including God the Son.
They are so worried about losing their privilege that they decided that even though they wanted to get rid of Jesus and kill Him, they would not do it when all the millions of people were gathered in Jerusalem for the feast.
The Jews were on shaky ground. They already did not worship the emperor like the rest of the empire did and had even fought battles over it like the Maccabean revolt. However, Rome had allowed them to keep their religion and not participate in emperor worship, but one thing that Rome would not tolerate was a riot and an uprising.
The Jews feared an uprising because word might get back to Rome and they might lose their status and position. That was why they thought to wait.
However, it was not up to them. This was God’s timing and it was time for the real Passover Lamb to be slain for the sins of the world.
Application
Have you ever noticed how so many people live like there is no God? They deny Him and don’t want for God to exist. They don’t want to give up authority over their lives. What they don’t know is that they are not the ones who really have any authority. God has it all and He can take the life they have if He so chooses.
Do you live your life as if you wished Jesus were not the real, legitimate King of you life?
It’s easy to get caught up in ruling our own lives and live as though God were not in charge, but for the believer, there is no greater comfort to know that we have a mighty King who will not let anything prevent His will from being accomplished.
We are now going to skip the next vignette and come back to it at the end so that we can end on a high note. We will move to verses 14-16.
2. Those Who Pretended to Follow Him (vv. 14-16)
2. Those Who Pretended to Follow Him (vv. 14-16)
14 Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests
15 and said, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.
16 And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.
Notice that the text says this was “one of the twelve.” We don’t have someone who was out on the fringes of the crowd following Jesus and who never really got close, but perhaps got jaded at Jesus for something and decided to turn against Him. We have someone who was in the close nit group of disciples.
Judas was one of the 12.
Judas was the treasurer.
Judas was given power and authority like the other disciples to cast out demons and heal the sick and preach about the kingdom.
Now we need to note that we are making an assumption here that Judas participated in these activities. The text only mentions that Jesus gave them authority and sent them out by twos. It is possible that Judas was a partner to another disciple and did not do these things, but I think we have to assume that he did participate. I think the text might mention it otherwise.
However, Judas was not a believer, but was a pretender. Notice how on the outside he had the look of a disciple. He did “Disciple stuff,” but he was inwardly living for his own kingdom.
He was looking for a place of power and position in the new kingdom that he thought Jesus was going to bring in as the Messiah. He wanted to be a ground-level investor.
Illustration
Imagine if you had invested in companies like Apple, Microsoft, Coca-cola, Amazon, and on and on goes the list. These are companies that now are worth billions. You would be incredibly wealthy.
Well, Judas might not have had dollar signs in his eyes, though the Bible does say that he stole from the money bag, but he was looking to be able to use his position with Jesus to gain an important position in the kingdom to come, or so he thought.
He was disappointed to learn that the kingdom of God was not like the kingdom he thought it would be. It was a spiritual kingdom first. He wanted it to be about the here and now and give him some return for his troubles.
God’s kingdom is a real kingdom and it will bless us to be a part of it, but the fulfillment of these promised blessings is for the age to come. We may receive blessings now in this life, but there is no guarantee. We are instead called to live a life of sacrifice for Jesus, and Judas wanted no part of that.
Matthew doesn’t give us the timeline that we find in the other gospels for when Jesus went out to plot against Jesus, but we know that he at least left after the Lord’s Supper. This account in Matthew is likely the prearrangement to set up the betrayal, where the meeting after the Passover dinner Jesus celebrated was to let the Jewish leaders know exactly where Jesus would be on that Thursday evening where they sought by stealth to arrest Him under the cover of night.
Judas’s question is a question that the betrayer always asks. What’s in it for me? What will you give me to betray him.
Now we are given an amount here. It is 30 pieces of silver. There is some debate among scholars as to how much money this is. One camp would say that this was an amount equal to about four months of a day-laborer’s wages.
It is also important to note that this amount is fulfilling prophecy and further highlights God’s sovereignty over the events.
Zechariah 11:12-13 says,
12 Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver.
13 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.
Zechariah was a prophet and the people showed contempt towards him by weighing out 30 pieces of silver.
While it might seem like 4 months wages is a lot, other Bible scholars have have argued that the amount was not that high of an amount and it highlighted the little regard for Jesus’ life that the priests had.
The reason for this is because 30 pieces of silver was the prescribed payment for a slave who had been killed. So the idea here is that this is slave wages for the life of the Son of God. It was also the price of a servant that was gored by an ox. All of these things point to contempt for Jesus and His life.
There is no value that can be weighed out for the life of the Son of God.
His life was so infinitely worthy that it was able to pay for the sins of all of God’s elect on the cross. It was able to endure and bear an eternity in hell, not for one person, but for every one who believes on Jesus as their Savior.
Conclusion
For time sake, we are going to have to stop here today and pick up next week with our last of the three vignettes. We will look at those who wish to worship Jesus.
But for now, let me ask you where you fit. If the spotlight were to be shined on your life, where would you find yourself.
Have you been disappointed by Jesus and what you thought the Christian life was going to bring you?
Have you been hostile to Christ and turned your back on Him?
Or, have you bowed your heart in worship towards Him?
Let us end today by reading one of the most popular verses in the entire Bible.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
God’s love towards you cut through the hate in your heart that you had towards Him.
God’s love cut through your disappointments, even though He knows what you do not - that the end of your salvation would be far greater than any gain you might have on this earth.
So, what will it be for you? Will you trust Christ and follow Him or will you cut a deal with the devil and betray the one who came to save your soul?
Let us end with the words of the Irish statesman, Thomas Moore,
O my sweet Savior Christ, who in your undeserved love towards humankind so kindly suffered the painful death of the cross, do not allow me to be cold or lukewarm in love again towards you.
Thomas Moore
