Today’s passage: Matthew 27:1-10
Helpful thoughts:
- The chief priests and the elders had to wait until the sun came up to officially convict Jesus. All of the previous aspects of the trial were against their rabbinical law because it all occurred at night.
- The Romans had taken away the right of the Jews to execute on their own. The Romans would now have to be convinced that Jesus was deserving of the death penalty.
- The word used to denote Judas’ change of mind is not the word used for repentance, only sorrow. Judas felt the guilt of his grievous sin, but he did not repent.
- When Judas threw the money back to the priests in the Temple, he was not giving it to charity. The money represented his guilt. He was trying to remove his guilt and place it on those who “hired him”. He tried to get out from under his guilt his own way.
- The prophecy about the Potter’s Field is actually in Zechariah 11, not Jeremiah. But, the books of the prophets were often called “Jeremiah” because his book was listed first. (They also often called the entire unit of the books of poetry the “Psalms”).
Questions to consider:
- Why would the priests remember to follow the law as it pertained to the blood money and yet have no problem violating their law repeatedly as it pertained to the trial of Jesus? How does this inconsistency follow the pattern of which Jesus had accused them?
- How does Judas’ suicide confirm that he had not repented? How was we trying to take away his feeling of guilt? Why would that not have worked?
- Judas was with Jesus for three years and saw and heard more than anyone else on the earth, save the other eleven disciples. Yet, he didn’t believe. He didn’t repent. He still tried to do things his own way even after he felt that incredible weight of guilt. What can that teach us?