The Sign of His Betrayal

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You know, it would be an easy thing if Jesus was to come and be the Messiah. There are prophecies that absolutely He could have said, I’m going to go and do that on purpose to make it look like I’m the Messiah. He could have.

We talked about some of those last week with Him going and getting the donkey to ride into Jerusalem. He knew it was a prophecy that the Messiah would come riding into Jerusalem as a king on the back of a donkey. He knew that.

That’s why He on purpose did that. And so it would be real easy for people to say, well, then he’s not the Messiah, he’s just an imposter because he just knew what the prophecies were and he deliberately fulfilled them so people would think he’s the Messiah. And if the only prophecies there were self-fulfilling ones, something that he could plan on and do if he weren’t God, then yeah, it would be real easy to write Jesus off as a lunatic, as somebody who just wanted to be the Messiah.

But I’ve also mentioned other kinds of prophecies that took place during his birth and before he was born, things that unless he was God and up there calling the shots anyway, he could not have as a regular man just said, I’m going to do this on purpose. Told you, I didn’t get to pick where I was born. None of y’all got to pick where you were born.

We didn’t get to pick who our parents would be. Now, I’d like to think if I got to pick where I was born and who my parents would be, I wouldn’t have changed anything. I’m happy with the way things are.

But we didn’t get to pick. And Jesus, if he was just some lunatic masquerading as the Messiah, he didn’t get to pick to be born in Bethlehem in fulfillment of prophecy. He didn’t get to pick to be born to a virgin in fulfillment of prophecy.

If he was not God, if he was not the Messiah, those things were completely out of his control. This morning I want to look at another thing that was completely out of his control. If he was trying to prove that he was the Messiah, then you would expect for him to be able to fulfill prophecies.

But if he was not the Messiah and was trying to prove that he was, you wouldn’t expect for his enemies, the people that did not believe he was the Messiah, who did not want anyone else to believe he was the Messiah, you could not expect that his enemies would fulfill the prophecies for him. And yet that’s exactly what we see in the life of Jesus Christ. If there was a prophecy saying that, oh, saying that I was going to be the next president of the United States, I’m not old enough and I don’t want to be a president. But if there was a prophecy saying I was going to be the next president of the United States and you’d know it because somebody was going to try to try to shoot me that didn’t like me, and the one that was going to be shot was going to be the next president because I’d have to live if I was still going to be the next president.

And there was this prophecy, and somebody out there did not like me and did not want me to be the president, did not want me to be the fulfillment of this. Well, he wouldn’t want to shoot me, would he? I couldn’t convince him to shoot me so I could be the president, could I?

Does that make sense? I couldn’t convince him to shoot me so I could be the one who fulfilled the prophecy because he’s my enemy. He doesn’t want me to be the president.

The same thing goes with Jesus. If he’s the Messiah, I’m sorry, if he’s pretending to be the Messiah, and there’s this prophecy of his enemies doing something to him, it would be really hard for him to twist his enemy’s arms and say, can you do this so I’ll be the Messiah? No, they didn’t want him to be.

Zechariah chapter 11. We’re going to start in verse 3. We’re really going to focus on the end of the passage here.

Excuse me, but I want to start in verse 3. There is a voice of the howling of the shepherds, for their glory is spoiled, a voice of the roaring of young lions, for the pride of Jordan is spoiled. Thus saith the Lord my God, feed the flock of the slaughter, whose possessors slay them and hold themselves not guilty.

And they that sell them say, blessed be the Lord, for I am rich, and their own shepherds pity them not. And we looked at Zechariah some last week, but just a reminder, Zechariah was one of the prophets around the time that the Jews had come back from the exile in Babylon. And he was dealing with even their unfaithfulness at that point.

Yeah, they had not gone back to their idols as they had before. They had not gone back to their pagan gods as they had before. But their hearts were still cold toward God.

And so he was dealing with some of this. It was about 500 years before Jesus Christ was born. And Zechariah prophesied some of the problems, some of the punishments, the destruction that were going to come on the Jewish people as a result of their unfaithfulness toward God.

They had just come through this 70 years of captivity where God had made one big gesture, one last-ditch attempt, get them to throw away their idols. And He’d let the Babylonians come in and take them over, not only occupy and oppress their country, but take the best and the brightest back to Babylon. He’d let that happen.

And 70 years, as a result of this captivity, some of the Jews turned back to God and said, you know, we’re going to worship Him. Daniel, the ones we know as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they were among these. Esther, Mordecai, they were all part of this remnant that feared God.

And some of these got to go back to Jerusalem, but even a generation later, the people were starting to forget God again. That’s just human nature, isn’t it? We get a little distant from our need for God, and if we’re not careful, we forget about Him.

We focus on ourselves and what we have going on, and not the God who cares for us, who sustains us, who protects us. And so Zechariah is writing to these people not only about the impending future, what’s about to happen right then and about some of the suffering that they’re about to go through in the 400 years between him and the coming of Christ. But he writes in this passage about some of the things that are going to happen when the Messiah comes and they reject the Messiah. How they’re going to reject him and what happens as a result of that.

And so he tells them, says, Thus saith the Lord my God, feed the flock of the slaughter, talking about the people of Israel, whose possessors slay them and hold themselves not guilty, and they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich, and their own shepherds pity them not. For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord. But, lo, I will deliver the men, every one, into his neighbor’s hand, and into the hand of his king, and they shall smite the land.

And out of their hand I will not deliver them. And in the 400 years between there, there was going to be a succession of kingdoms that were going to come in and take over the Israelites. We don’t just know this from the Bible saying this.

We know this from Zechariah prophesying it, and then history tells us. Because Alexander the Great came in and conquered Palestine, conquered Israel. And then when he died, his kingdom was split, and the Greeks based in Egypt and the Greeks based in Syria warred for centuries over who would get control over the Holy Land.

They warred back and forth, but the Israelites were never independent until they got the idea, hey, there are these people over in the west called Rome that seemed to be a growing power. Maybe we’ll ally ourselves with them. Instead of turning to God, they turned to the Romans.

And the Romans allied themselves with them for a while and then came in and said, you know, we’re kind of tired of this. We’re going to put a puppet ruler on your throne. And the Romans conquered and oppressed Israel.

And that went on until the time of Christ. As a result, they had turned from God again. And as Zacharias said, God did not deliver them from their oppressor’s hands. Now, there was a short period of time when, you remember the story of, I believe it’s Hanukkah, Judah the Maccabee came in and launched a rebellion, kicked the Greeks out, and they were free for a little while, but then the oppressors came right back in.

And even some of the Israelites were collaborating with these countries that oppressed them. And so God never delivered, during this time, never delivered them out of the hands of their oppressors. Verse 7, And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock.

And when he’s talking about the poor of the flock, I believe he’s talking about the remnant in this flock, this Israel, this remnant who feared God. If I understand it correctly, that’s what it means. And I took unto me two staves, the one I called beauty and the other I called bands, and I fed the flock.

And these apparently represent the staff called beauty represents God’s grace. And the other one called bands represents his justice, apparently, from what people who are smarter than I am about Old Testament prophecy say. And these were the staffs that he had as the shepherd over Israel.

And he said, I will take these two staves, and with them I will feed Israel. I feed the flock. Three shepherds also I cut off in one month, and my soul loathed them, and their soul abhorred me.

Then said I, I will not feed you, that that dieth, let it die. And that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off. and let the rest eat every one of the flesh of another.

There’s a lot in there, there’s a lot of prophecy in there that I still don’t understand. A lot of Old Testament prophecy that points to things that happened in those 400 years that I still don’t completely understand. But what I know from the passage as a whole is that they’re looking at a time when God said, whatever’s going to happen to you, I’m going to let it happen because I’m not going to deliver you from this anymore.

So he tells them in verse 10, And I took my staff, even beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. And it was broken in that day, and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. There was a time when God broke this staff called beauty, and God was no longer gracious in the sense that He was going to deliver Israel, that He was going to protect them for this time.

And He said the poor of the flock would know that it was the word of the Lord. And we know that there were people even before this, there were people after this, who saw these opposing countries, saw this oppression, and knew that it was God’s will at that time. Even earlier in Jeremiah’s day, when they saw the Babylonians coming in, Jeremiah, I believe, was put in prison because he was preaching to the Jews, don’t resist the Babylonians.

This is God’s punishment, just don’t resist, just take it. And they said he was unpatriotic, that he was, oh, what did they call it? It was sedition and put him in prison.

Just like during World War I, they took, and I’m not saying I agree with these people, but they took different religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they took people that didn’t believe in war. They took pacifists, and they were preaching, don’t go to war, don’t fight, this isn’t our fight, it’s not God’s will. And whether they were right or wrong, they said these things, and the government said, that’s sedition, and they put some of them in prison.

Well, that’s the same thing that happened to Jeremiah, because he was seditious, he was unpatriotic. there was always this remnant that knew that what was happening was not a rallying cry for Israel to get together and go fight the oppressors, that it was God’s punishment, it was God’s judgment on them, and said, this is the word of the Lord, this is what He’s spoken, and we need to not oppose His will here. And so He said that the poor flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord when He cut this staff asunder.

This is the part I want to focus on, verse 12. And I said unto them, if you think good, give me my price, and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price 30 pieces of silver.

Okay, this is God speaking. This is the Lord. If you notice further up, it says, this is the word of the Lord.

Thus saith the Lord my God, verse 4, and I will feed the flock of the slaughter, verse 7. Verse 9, then said I, I will not feed you. Then I took my staff.

This is God speaking. He says in verse 12, and I said unto them, if ye think good, give me my price. And if not, forbear.

If not, if you don’t think it’s good, just put up with it. So they weighed for my price 30 pieces of silver. God tells them, if you think it’s the right thing to do, give me my price.

Well, what does that mean? We’ll see in just a few minutes what that means. If not, if you don’t think it’s the right thing to do, to give me my price, then forbear.

Forbearance means basically putting up with it. Then you’re just going to have to deal with it. And so they weighed out for my price 30 pieces of silver.

And the Lord said unto me, cast it unto the potter a goodly price. This is Zechariah speaking again, but not actually about himself, about somebody else in the future. The Lord said unto me, Zechariah, cast it unto the potter a goodly price that I was prized out of them.

And I took the 30 pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. Then I cast asunder mine other staff. This is, again, verse 14, God speaking again, because he’s the one with the staves, the staffs that it talked about earlier.

then I cut asunder mine other staff, even bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. Okay, if that’s a little confusing, I don’t blame you. It’s a little confusing sometimes with the Old Testament prophecies to figure out who’s speaking and who are they speaking to because it switches back and forth.

So I had to read this several times just to get a good grasp on it. But what God is saying is that there was going to come a time when He was no longer going to deliver Israel from the things that oppressed them And there was going to be a time when they would turn on him, and he said, Give me my price. And we’ll see in a minute what that exactly means.

Give me my price. So they said, For God, thirty pieces of silver. And that it was cast unto the potter a goodly price, these thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

And then God said, I’m going to break the other staff, these bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. He was going to bring destruction as a result of what happened on Israel and Judah. What in the world is God talking about?

Give me my price. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 26. Matthew chapter 26.

There are three passages, unless there are, I’m sorry, there are three places, not necessarily three passages, but there are three places in the Bible where it talks about 30 pieces of silver, and they’re all related. One, I believe they’re all related. One is in the book of Exodus, one is in the book of Zechariah, and another is in the gospel accounts.

Matthew 26, we’re not going to read through this whole part. We’re going to look at the parts today about Judas in Matthew 26 and 27. In Matthew 26, verse 14, it says, Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests and said unto them, What will you give me?

And I will deliver him unto you, speaking of Jesus. And they covenanted, they agreed with him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time, he sought opportunity to betray him.

Okay, so there it mentions 30 pieces of silver again. We skip forward a little bit, not because the rest of the part isn’t important, but because it doesn’t talk about what we’re talking about today. We skip forward to verse 47 when we pick up with Judas again.

In between there, it talks about Jesus going into the garden and praying, a very important passage of Scripture. In verse 47, we meet up with Jesus again and Judas, where Jesus is in the garden praying, and all of a sudden, here comes Judas. Verse 47, and while he yet spake, while Jesus yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came and with him a great multitude with swords and staves from the chief priests and the elders of the people.

And now he that betrayed him gave him a sign saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he. Hold him fast. So Judas had said, when we go to arrest Jesus, the one I kiss is Jesus. Now these people knew who Jesus was.

They hated him, so they had to have known who he was. But it was kind of a confirmation. This is the one I’m giving you.

So whomsoever I shall kiss, that same as he, hold him fast. When I go and kiss somebody, when he kissed Jesus and I assume on the cheek, take him, arrest him, hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus and said, Hail, Master, and kissed him. What a piece of work Judas was. I’m sorry, there’s not much more to say.

Hail, Master, as he’s betraying him and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Now, let’s not assume from this that Jesus was ignorant of what was going on.

Because he had just said in verse 46, Jesus knew all along what was going on. Friend, wherefore art thou come? Where did you come from?

Then came they and laid hands on Jesus and took him. So Judas kisses Jesus. Jesus said, where did you come from, friend?

And as he sang this, the men rushed in to arrest Jesus. And behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand. This is Peter.

Stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck a servant of the high priests and smote off his ear. Peter, always the rash individual, rushes to judgment, grabs out his sword and rushes on one of the high priest’s servants and cuts his ear off. Then Jesus said unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? Jesus still, during His arrest and His execution, is in control.

He at any time could have called on the Father and said, Get me out of here. And the Father would have done it. But Jesus said, I came for a purpose.

I came to fulfill the prophecies. I came to be a Redeemer. So this has got to happen.

In that same hour, verse 55, said Jesus to the multitudes, Are you come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you, teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.

Then all the disciples forsook him and fled. All the disciples ran away. And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the scribes and elders were assembled.

But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest’s palace and went in and sat with the servants to see the end. So Peter’s still interested. He still cares about Jesus, but he just doesn’t want to be associated too closely.

How many times are we that way? We still concern ourselves with Jesus, but we don’t want to be associated too closely. Now the chief priests and elders and all the council sought false witness against Jesus to put him to death.

Notice it says they sought false counsel. They couldn’t even find someone who could make a truthful accusation against him. But found none, yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none.

At the last came two false witnesses. And they knew it was false. They were looking for false witnesses.

And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days. And the high priest arose and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witnesses against thee?

But Jesus held his peace, and the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure you by the living God that thou tellest whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. So they came in and said, He’s going to tear down the temple. And that he would raise it again in three days.

What he had said was, Tear down this temple, and I’ll raise it again in three days. Talking about his body, not Solomon’s temple, not where they worshipped. So they twisted his words, made a false accusation.

Jesus answered nothing. And he said, I demand by the living God, you tell me whether or not you’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus said unto him, thou hast said, you’ve said it.

Jesus says, there you go. Nevertheless, I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, he hath spoken blasphemy.

What further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. He’s so upset, he rips his coat apart, screaming blasphemy.

What think ye then? They answered and said, He is guilty of death. Then did they spit in his face and buffeted, harmed him, and others smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee?

So they begin immediately to beat him. And we see him going through the ordeal with Pilate and all of that. That’s important.

Go back and read that. I want to get back to what Judas has just done because this part is the fulfillment of the prophecy that we’re talking about this morning. Turn forward to chapter 27 and in verses 1 through 10.

I’m sorry, the part in between there was not Pilate. It was Peter denying. Chapter 27, verses 1 through 10.

When all the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. And when they had bound him, they led him away and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor. So they held him over until the morning and then they took him bound up to the governor.

Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, saw that Jesus was condemned. I don’t know if Judas, I can’t understand. I mean, I try to, but I can’t understand Judas’ thoughts or motivation here.

Because he says when he saw he was condemned, well, what did he think they were going to do when he betrayed him? Maybe he just thought they were going to give him a slap on the wrist, I don’t know. But here he says when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself and brought again the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood, the innocent blood.

And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that. His conscience bothered him, and he repented.

And he came back to the priests, and he said, I’ve sinned. I’ve betrayed the innocent blood. They said, What business is that of ours?

That’s your problem. You go take care of that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself.

And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, It is not lawful for to put them in the treasury because it is the price of blood. Now they’re concerned about right and wrong. And they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers in.

So they took the thirty pieces of silver and gave it to the potter for the field so they could bury Judas. Wherefore that field was called the field of blood unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet.

And they took the 30 pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them for the potter’s field as the Lord appointed me. Before we get into the prophecy it talks about there, there is one little problem, and it kind of bothered me. It says it’s written by Jeremy the prophet.

And before I started, which I thought to be Jeremiah, probably is Jeremiah. When I started, when I have seen this many times, I thought, okay, it’s written in Jeremiah. Well, I got studying for this and realized it’s written in Zechariah.

Folks, I believe in the inerrancy of the Word of God, so I don’t automatically go to, oh, there’s an error. I go to, what am I not seeing here? And as I’ve looked at it and studied, it’s important to realize that the Jews, the Old Testament, their Bible was different than ours.

not the wording, the order and the way they put it together was different. Our Old Testament, their Bible, is called the Tanakh in Hebrew, and it comes from the Torah, I believe the Nevi’im, and the Ketuvim. The Ketuvim is the book of the prophets.

All the prophets were organized into one book. Now, it’s divided up by who wrote the prophecy, but the first prophet to write in the Ketuvim, in the book of the prophets, was Jeremiah’s prophecy. So it’s not an error here when Matthew says it’s written in the book of Jeremiah.

He’s not talking about Jeremiah’s actual prophecy. He knew full well it was in Zechariah’s prophecy, but it was in the book that started with Jeremiah. For example, if we look at the encyclopedias and they have volume WXYZ, and I wanted to look up something about xylophones, it starts with an X, but the book is the volume that starts with W.

So is it wrong to say xylophone would be in the W encyclopedia? It’s not wrong. It’s not an error.

It’s maybe not as precise as we might demand today, but it’s not an error. So once I studied that out and found out what he was really talking about, it reconfirms for me the inerrancy of the Bible that even this was not an error. He knew what he was talking about.

It came from the book of the prophets. It came from the book of Jeremiah, but it was Zechariah’s prophecy. It says, This was fulfilled, that which was spoken by the prophet, saying, They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them for the potter’s field as the Lord appointed me.

He says this is the fulfillment of that prophecy in the Old Testament about giving God his price and it being 30 pieces of silver and the price going to the potter’s field. I mean, you’ve got to admit, if that was just a coincidence, that’s a pretty incredible coincidence. Because this is something, if you believe, as I do, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and that he’s orchestrating all of this, that he was in control even during his crucifixion.

It’s not that incredible. But my goodness, you have to believe in pretty big coincidences to believe Jesus was just an ordinary man here. That he convinced his enemies, who did not want to believe he was the Messiah, to give further proof that he was the Messiah.

Zechariah said these 30 pieces of silver would be paid, and it’s going to be a sign of the Messiah because he’s talking about God here. If you notice what we read earlier in the book of Zechariah, It’s God saying, give me my price, and that they would choose 30 pieces of silver as his price. I know we’re short on time.

I want to look at four things just very briefly about this prophecy, this sign of his betrayal. The first was that the Messiah would be betrayed. The person that’s written about in Zechariah, we can see, was to be betrayed because they were asking a price for him. They were willing to give a price for him.

It’s harder and harder for me to understand the people who were looking for the Messiah, looking for this earthly king, and still today saying Jesus couldn’t have been the Messiah because he didn’t accomplish building this earthly kingdom. When I see more and more prophecies dealing with Jesus’ betrayal, with Jesus not setting up the earthly kingdom, but things like this that he would be betrayed. And Zechariah makes it clear that he would be betrayed because when you’re asking for a price, you’re either betraying somebody or paying a ransom on a kidnap victim.

But he was asked for a price. The Messiah was to be betrayed. We see that in Zechariah 11, 12.

It’s also important, the second thing is that the Messiah would not just be betrayed. He’d be betrayed for a pitiful amount. We would expect the Messiah, we would expect the Messiah to command a king’s ransom.

If they wanted to betray him, if they wanted to kidnap him, we would expect that they’d be willing to give all the gold they had. Because after all, the Messiah, as we’ve talked about before, is the king. He’s more than that.

He’s the king of kings. We would expect a king’s ransom in gold. What was it?

Montezuma or. . .

Oh, I really should know this. I would have known this if I hadn’t decided to talk about it. I believe it was Montezuma who was ransomed.

His people. . .

He was kidnapped by the Spanish and his people paid a ransom of something like two full rooms of gold for this mighty king. And yet we have the Messiah here that was given 30 pieces of silver. He was bought with 30 pieces of silver.

That sounds pretty good to us. Silver’s at a. .

. I can’t remember what silver was at an ounce last week, but it was pretty high. I couldn’t just go out and buy a piece of silver for nothing on the way home without thinking about it.

Sounds pretty good, but back then, 30 pieces of silver wasn’t much at all. I said there was a third place in the Bible that it talks about 30 pieces of silver. It’s in the book of Exodus.

30 pieces of silver was the compensation that was paid when a servant, not a king, but a servant was gored by an ox. If your servant who’s nobody was gored by an ox and killed, then you had to compensate the owner of the servant with 30 pieces of silver. The Messiah was not betrayed for a king’s ransom.

He was betrayed for this pittance, this compensation for a servant or a slave. It’s incredible. King of kings, Zachariah said, would be bought.

God himself would be bought, paid for, with a servant or slave’s worth. That’s how little the people valued Jesus Christ. The third thing is that the Lord Himself identifies Himself as the one who would be betrayed. This is the most incredible thing to me in here, because again, I don’t see how this could be a coincidence, that if Jesus was just a man, He orchestrated all this to happen, that His enemies would do this.

Jesus has to have been the one who fulfilled this. It just fits too well. And yet Zechariah, in Zechariah’s writing, It is the Lord who says, give me my price, and that they would pay 30 pieces of silver for him.

Yet again, we see confirmation that Jesus Christ was not just a man. Jesus Christ is the Lord himself. It’s an incredible thing.

T

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