The Traitor's Suicide

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2015 · 5 July 2015

Do you know that each year twice as many Americans kill themselves as kill each other? Suicide ranks among the top ten killers in the United States and we are way down the list of nations in terms of frequency of suicide per population. We don't really report suicides very well so that the actual suicide rate might be as high as twice the number of reported suicides every year. Why do people do that? Most of those who analyze human behavior come up with five reasons or categories in which suicides fall.

First, some people kill themselves for what we could call retaliation. They are angry and they want to hurt someone and they think the best way to hurt someone is to kill themselves. And often they are right, they will inflict a hurt on someone from which that person can never recover. Secondly, people kill themselves for what we could call reunion. This particularly is common among those who kill themselves at an older age. They have lost their life partner, and rather than try to live alone, they take their life in order to join that person wherever they may believe that person is.

Thirdly, some people take their lives out of what we could call rebirth. In other words, they are tired of the way it is in this life and they would like to get another chance. They believe maybe there is another world somewhere and it would be better than the one here and they would like to try all over again. Fourthly, suicide that is what psychologists have called "retroflex." And that is to say that someone is very angry at someone else but they cannot kill someone else so they kill themselves out of frustration.

But the most dominant reason is what we could call retribution. People take their lives to inflict upon themselves a severe punishment which they believe they should receive. They have sinned and they think that there is no other way they can come out from under the anxiety and the pressure of their own conscience. They feel total failures overwhelmed by guilt and they kill themselves as an ultimate punishment.

A guilt-ridden conscience then probably is a dominant factor in many suicides. The guilt that a person feels may be a result of real sin and real wrong and real evil, or it may be artificial. It may also be inflicted upon them by unrealistic standards established by their parents, or peers or by their own desires. There are two classic suicides in the Scripture that are illustrations of this.

The Old Testament suicide is Ahithophel in 2 Samuel 17 who betrayed David. The New Testament one is Judas who betrayed Jesus Christ. In both cases, they took their lives out of the guilt of betraying an innocent person, their plans going array and everything falling apart. And unable to deal with the anxiety, they took their own lives. So let us read about the suicide of Judas in Matthew 27 this evening.

Now Scripture infers in the case of Judas and in the case of Ahithophel, that suicide was an act of an evil of a deranged mind and is not a viable solution. It is a crime against God and it is a crime against self. It is to take a prerogative on oneself that belongs only to God who gives life and takes life. It is an act of sin and a lack of trust in the wisdom and purpose of God.

Judas committed the most enormous crime that any man ever committed, for he betrayed the most innocent man, the only perfect man that ever lived. And he really only had two choices. Either he could go to Jesus Christ whom he had betrayed and seek forgiveness, or he could eliminate himself. And he opted for self-destruction.

So, in our passage today, Matthew takes us away from the trial of Christ for a moment to follow the story of Judas to its tragic end. Matthew’s primary purpose in giving us the story of Judas was not to just tell us the story of Judas. It was to demonstrate the purity and the perfection and majesty of Jesus Christ. He is presenting the King. And in this contrast, Jesus Christ is exalted against the evil backdrop of the death of Judas.

Actually Matthew does this in a series of contrasts, the first is a contrast between the unjust leaders and the sinless Lord. As we have been following the first two phases of the Jewish trial of Christ, we have been made very much aware of the injustice of the trial. There has been no legitimate accusation against Jesus. He has been permitted no defense. There were false witnesses called to give testimony. Judas was bribed to be a traitor and every single statute which accommodated their justice system was violated.

And in the midst of it all, the silent majestic Christ stands innocent. Finally they decide to kill Him for blasphemy. Jesus said He was the Messiah, the Son of God, but that wasn't blasphemy, that was the truth. So He will be executed for the truth, for being who He really is. He stands as the sinless Messiah, the Son of God as over against the unjust leaders who have tried to accuse Him. And the contrast between the two paints the majesty of Jesus so beautifully and clearly.

Already phase one and two of the Jewish trial have occurred between 1 and 3 o’clock in the morning. Since that time, Jesus has been a bound prisoner in the house of Caiaphas waiting there until the dawn. They want to have another trial at the dawn, just a short time, so they can put a veneer of legality over their illegal trial. They know their law requires it be held in the daytime.

Matthew 27:1-2, “When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. 2 And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.” Luke says they led Him into their counsel. What Luke was saying there is that this time they had it in their counsel, their proper place: the judgment hall. They took a formal vote so it would appear to be a legal trial to put Jesus to death.

Pontius Pilate was governor of that area from 26 to about 36 A.D., right through the ministry and death of Christ. The Jewish trial now is over. And as you come to verse 2 you begin the Roman trial. The religious trial is over, now comes the Roman secular trial. They have to decide there whether this is in fact legitimate for them to execute this man whom the Jews want dead.

Now that brings us to another contrast between the guilty Judas and the innocent Jesus. Verse 3-4, "Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus 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.” We just see Judas here as Jesus is transported from the Jewish trial to the place of Pilate. And in process, Judas who betrayed Him saw Jesus was condemned.

And just as when Peter saw Jesus and Jesus saw Peter, Judas also was devastated at the sight of Jesus and overcome with his own sinfulness. So he has the same reaction, seeing Jesus condemned tears Judas to the very core of his being. And it says, "When he saw Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind.” He is feeling the pain of guilt and the pain is excruciating and paralyzing because he knows that what he has done is evil. Built into every human soul, there is a sense of right and wrong.

That is God's gift to man to hold him back from evil and its ultimate end, eternal hell. Even the devil himself indwelling him, even the demons at the apex of their activity, even sin when its reached its highpoint can't cancel out God's warning system. And we all should be real grateful for that warning system because if we are Christians, it once drove us to Christ. But Judas did not genuinely repent, the word used is metamelomai which means to feel sorry, to feel sad, to wish it hadn't happened. And that's as far as it goes.

The only thing Judas knew to do was to undo what he had done. So he went to the priests right there taking Jesus to the place where Pilate would rule on Him. He wants to give back the 30 pieces of silver. He sought not righteousness but relief. There was no desire for the truth, there was no belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior. He just wanted to get rid of his pain. He wanted to unload his guilt because he knew that he had betrayed an innocent man.

That's just the way sin is. It looks good and then you take it and it stings with a poison that you may experience the rest of your life and except for the grace of God you will never be relieved from. Verse 4, he says, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." He doesn't say this is God's Son, this is the Savior, he just says I have sinned because I have betrayed innocent blood. This is Judas testifying to the perfection of Jesus Christ. This is His betrayer saying this is an innocent man.

What is the meaning of this? Judas is following basic Jewish jurisprudence. He came back as a false witness to confess that he was a false witness. He came back under such tremendous guilt that he wanted to have his life taken. He knew Deuteronomy 16 that a false witness who witnesses against a person unto death pays with his own life. No man who ever lived felt more guilt than Judas felt because no man ever committed a greater crime than he committed.

So, what was their response when Judas came back? Look as verse 4 continues, “They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” What do we care, that is your problem. As shepherds, they are really bad, having no concern about him at all. Jesus rightly characterized them in Matthew 23:4, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.” They're indifferent to this man's guilt, indifferent to his pain, his anxiety and his remorse.

Deuteronomy 27:25 says, "Cursed is he that takes reward to slay an innocent person." Judas knew that he was cursed. So, what is Judas going to do? How's he doing to deal with this? Well, verse 5, "And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.”

Did you notice the word temple? It is the key to understanding this thing. There are two words in the Greek language that are used in the gospels for temple. The first word “hieron” means the temple total, the whole area, the courtyards, the walls, basically the whole thing. The other is the word naos, it refers to the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary in the middle. When he went back, he threw the silver not into the hieron, he threw it in the naos, the Holy of Holies.

Why? Spite. There was only group of people that could go in there. Who was it? Priests. And he was saying to them, "If you won't take it willingly and do something with it, I will force you to take it and do something with it." And he threw it into a place where only the priests could go and therefore they had to deal with it. It was an act of spite.

And then he left and it says, "and hanged himself." Why did he do that? In Deuteronomy 21:23 there is a well-known Old Testament passage that is repeated in the New Testament in Galatians. It says this, "Cursed is he that hangs on a tree." So Judas takes his life as an ultimate act of punishment and does it in a way that is ultimately cursed by God. Because he feels he justly deserves that.

He could have gone to Jesus Christ, but he didn't. And death doesn't relieve guilt. Death doesn't relieve sin. Death doesn't relieve misery. And death doesn't relieve pain. It just makes it permanent and intensifies it beyond imagination. Whatever Judas suffered before he killed Jesus, he suffers this day, far more severely than he did then.

In Acts 1:18 it says that Judas fell headlong on some rocks and his bowels gushed out when he burst open. He hanged himself, the branch broke, or the rope broke, the noose slipped, but the combination of both was the result. Verse 6 says, “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.”

Now, we now have not only the testimony of Judas to the innocence of Christ, but the testimony of the whole Sanhedrin. They finally said it was blood money, which money is illegitimately paid to someone to get someone else killed. Here you have the testimony for all time and for all the world to hear right out of the mouths of the chief priests themselves that the money they gave to Judas was blood money. They didn't mind taking it out of the treasury, but they were too pious to put it back where it came from.

Verse 7, “So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers.” A potter's field would be a place that had been used by potters for a long time, all the clay had been scraped off. It was just a field that was there. You could probably buy it fairly cheaply. So they would use polluted money to buy a polluted field to bury polluted Gentiles in. So by their own lips they confess to their deed.

Verse 8 says, "Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.” Who called it that? The people did. Thirty years after this when Matthew writes, it is called the "field of blood". So the testimony of the population themselves was that Jesus was executed by bribery, unlawfully. The hypocrisy of men was nothing but fulfilling the prophecy of God.

Verse 9-10, "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.”

Men thought they were doing what they wanted, but all the time they were fulfilling God's plan. It was prophecy. This act of buying that field to bury strangers in was a testimony to the whole community, a living memorial to the bribery, to the blood money. Let me add a footnote. Acts 1:18 and 19 says, where Judas fell and his bowels gushed out, that's about 43 days after this, the people also called it the field of blood, because Judas was associated with that blood money. Thirty years later the field they bought was still the "field of blood."

Was that the plot of man? No, it was the plan of God. This prophecy comes from Zechariah 11:12 and 13. It is altered by the Holy Spirit to give its full meaning. In Zechariah it mentions the 30 pieces of silver. It mentions the potter's field. But if all you had was Zechariah, you wouldn't understand the fullness of the prophecy, so the Holy Spirit here alters the words a brief bit in order to make its meaning full.

Jesus is exalted by the testimony of the chief witness and bribed traitor as to His innocence. He is exalted by the testimony of the Sanhedrin themselves that they have blood money in their hands. He is exalted by the testimony of the populace of Jerusalem who call everything related to this incident, a field of blood. And He is exalted by the fact that all of this fulfills the prophecy of the Old Testament. And so, out of the ugliness of the scene comes the beauty of Jesus Christ. Let's pray.