Thirty Pieces of Silver
Matthew 26:15 and 27:3-10
[Judas said] “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.
Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus[a] 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.”Perhaps no figure represents the bitterness of our Lord’s passion, aside from Jesus himself, as the one who betrayed him, Judas, the man from the town of Carioth, that is, Ish-Carrioth, Iscariot. His very name, Judas, is a byword, a synonym for betrayal. You don’t find many children named Judas nowadays, much more than you find many Adolphs or Jezebells running around. And for good reason. What’s more bitter and painful than the betrayal of a friend?
Maybe you’ve experienced this in your own life. Someone who was once close to you, who shared your table, shared your secrets, maybe even a spouse – turns on you in an act of betrayal, stabs the knife in your back, and breaks your trust in a way you never imagined. It’s one thing to suffer the wrongdoing of an enemy. That, you pretty much expect. But when a friend does you wrong. You not only suffer from the wrong itself, but from the broken trust. You end up going back and re-thinking your entire relationship. How long has this person been against me? Why didn’t I see the signs sooner? Was it something I did that made them act this way? And all this doubt and regret rubs into the wound as if it were salt.
Well in the case of Judas, Jesus knew he would do it. I don’t think that took away any of the bitterness. Maybe it made it even worse.
Then take the 30 pieces of silver themselves. This was the traditional price of a slave. Particularly in Exodus 31:20, it is the price paid to a master for a slave that is accidentally killed, gored by an ox. So it is the price of a dead slave. How fitting for Jesus. He who is greatest among us because he makes himself to be a slave of all. He who is killed, not by accident, and not by an ox, but according to God’s own divine purpose and plan, and pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, and crucified for our salvation.
Moreover, there is an unusual prophecy in Zechariah 11, in which wicked rulers paid the prophet 30 pieces of silver for his work of prophesying their doom. The price was considered an insult, the price of a dead slave, that’s what they thought of him. Zechariah then says, “so I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter” Just as Judas later returned the money, throwing it into the temple, and it was used to buy the potter’s field.
That Jesus was sold for this prices is also intended as an insult by his wicked foes. A further humiliation among all the humiliations and sufferings he endured – both to his body, and to his honor.
And what a great reversal, that he who was sold for mere silver, comes to redeem us from death with a far greater treasure. He “has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sin, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with his holy precious blood, and his innocent suffering and death.”
Jesus is betrayed, Jesus is sold, Jesus suffers and Jesus dies…. Precisely for the Judases of the world. Precisely for all those who would betray him, sell him out, exchange the truth for a lie, and the eternal treasures for the earthly bric-a-brac of sin.
For while you may well identify with Jesus in this case, as someone who has been betrayed, won’t you also consider how you are like the Judas who does the betraying?
Don’t think you have? Think you’ve always been faithful to God? Then think again. For Christian, you betray him every time you sin. You sell him out every time you decide your own comfort and pleasure is worth more than his holy law. When you despise preaching and his word, or hurt or harm your neighbor, or rebel against rightful authority, or covet your neighbor’s stuff. When you speak ill of your neighbor and harm his reputation. When you put some other thing, some other idea, some other anything before the one true God. And often the price is not even worth 30 pieces of silver.
We are no better than Judas. We can’t stand in judgment over him, wagging our fingers, “shame, shame, Judas, how could you betray Jesus?” That finger needs to point back at ourselves.
Judas, for his part, at least felt bad about what he had done. He repented, in a way. He got the contrition part. He tried to take it back, but it was too late. You can’t take back your sins. You can’t buy your way out of your debt. You can’t throw the sins back where they came from, for the evil comes from you! Judas was right to regret his grievous betrayal, but as the coins clinked down on the temple floor, sadly, his story ended in tragedy. For he lacked the second part of repentance. He knew his sin, but he didn’t trust his savior.
Take for a contrast, Peter, who we heard about last week – Peter, who in his own way also betrayed Jesus – denying him three times. Judas fell into despair, but Peter was restored and forgiven. Both played a bitter role in Jesus’ passion. But only Peter would receive redemption in faith.
And so for you, dear Christian. Consider your own little betrayals of Christ, but do not despair as Judas did. Hear the comforting and forgiving words of Jesus, words of restoration, like Peter did. Do you love me? Feed my sheep.
And look at what happened with those pieces of silver. The blood money. Tainted and corrupted by the sin they were used to commit. Given and received by both the betrayer and the enemies of Jesus. And yet, from these, God worked even some good. Besides playing their part in bringing Jesus toward the cross, these coins purchased a field for the burial of foreigners. It was called, “The field of blood”, in Hebrew, “Akeldama”. In reference perhaps to the blood of Judas that was spilled when he killed himself there, or perhaps also to the blood of Jesus, who was betrayed with it. Unclean foreigners, unclean corpses, and unclean blood money. And then the bloody hanging corpse of Judas as the finishing touch of this picture of betrayal and sin and what it brings – ugly, ugly death.
But the bitter sufferings and death of Jesus lead to something else. In Jesus’ death, by Jesus blood, there is hope. Consider also the allusion to Jeremiah, which Matthew mentions. It references an incident where Jeremiah (at God’s direction) bought a field with some pieces of silver. For the people of Jeremiah’s day, it was a prophetic action that there was hope for the future – hope beyond the invading armies of Babylon and the troubles of the day – hope that God would remain faithful to his promises, and return the people from their exile, plant them in the land again.
In Jesus there is hope for the future, for you and me. Even when we suffer, even when we suffer the betrayals of friends, or even if our own flesh should betray us (and it surely does), we have a friend in Jesus who will never double-cross us. Even when our own betrayals weigh us down, we are not driven to despair, because the cross of Jesus and the blood of Jesus restore us, and bring us even from the grave, to a life in the world to come.
This Lenten season, repent and believe. Exchange the silver coins of betrayal for the precious blood of Jesus. And rest assured that you are redeemed by him from slavery to sin and death.
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