Taking Ownership for our Wrongs | Matthew 27:6-10

[00:00:00] Real Truth Daily. This is Daily Truths with Dave Ahlman.

[00:00:07] Hi everybody, welcome back to Daily Truths. Remember we're in the story of Judas having betrayed Jesus and now he returns to the chief priests, the elders, the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of the people and he says take back your money. Here's the 30 pieces of silver, the money by which I was paid to betray Jesus of Nazareth.

[00:00:28] And then, and then of course he went out and hanged himself. We talked about that a couple days ago. And then we pick up verse six, 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.

[00:00:43] In other words, since this money was used to crucify someone, of course he hadn't been crucified yet, but Judas saw the handwriting on the wall.

[00:00:51] He knew that Jesus was going to be crucified or condemned to death. And so now they say it's not right for us to take this money and use it in the temple treasury.

[00:01:01] Okay, so they took counsel. In other words, they had a meeting like many Lutherans do. They took counsel and they brought with them, they bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers.

[00:01:12] This was south of Jerusalem, a ways, a potter's field. The reason they called it a potter's field is a clay was very rich there. And now, so those who wanted to make clay pots would go to this place, get the clay and make clay pots.

[00:01:26] That's why it was called the potter's field. But now it's going to be a cemetery. And Jews didn't like to have cemeteries anywhere near the city because they considered people that were dead unclean.

[00:01:37] And so they buy this field and they use it as a burial place for strangers, including Judas. Okay. Therefore, that field has been called the field of blood to this day.

[00:01:49] In other words, this was written some 25, 30 years after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended. And so till that day, it was still called the field of blood. Wow.

[00:01:59] Okay. Verse nine, then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah saying, and they took the 30 pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel.

[00:02:13] And they gave them for the potter's field as the Lord had directed me. In other words, Zachariah and Jeremiah had predicted that this was going to happen.

[00:02:21] That Jesus would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, right? It was in fulfillment of prophecy.

[00:02:28] Now I want to go back and look at these chief priests and elders. They really tacitly kind of understood. Oops, we messed up.

[00:02:37] We condemned a man to death who really didn't deserve it. We messed up. Oh, well, too bad. He's out of the picture.

[00:02:50] He's not a threat to us anymore. He's not a threat to the Romans anymore. We're getting rid of him. Yeah. Yeah. We, he probably was innocent.

[00:02:57] We probably shouldn't have done what we did, but no big deal. Okay. So here's the thing for us. We know we mess up.

[00:03:06] We know we sin against God. We know we break his commandments. And there's one of two things we can do. We can kind of ignore it or dismiss it or say, Hey, it's really no big deal.

[00:03:18] Or we can say, yeah, it is a big deal. My sin crucified the son of God. I am responsible for the transgressions of my life.

[00:03:26] The evil, the sin, the wickedness, the bad intentions. Sometimes we have harbored in our hearts. Jesus knows it all. And here's the marvelous thing.

[00:03:37] We can confess it before God. We can take ownership for our wrongs. We can say, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And then God through his astounding, amazing grace forgives us for the sake of his son, Jesus.

[00:03:51] Imagine this. One of the chief priests and elders would have said, Oh my goodness. We now recognize that Jesus is the son of God. We crucified innocent blood. In other words, we shed innocent blood.

[00:04:04] Oh, we're going to come to faith. Some of them did. The book of Acts tells us that some of them realized we messed up.

[00:04:11] We need God's absolution. We crucified the son of God and they received forgiveness from God. The same thing can be said about us. We mess up. We take ownership. We confess it before God.

[00:04:25] And God wipes the slate clean. He forgives our sins, declares us innocent in his sight, elevates us to this glorious status of being called a child of God. How cool is this?

[00:04:37] So unlike these guys, at least most of these guys in this text, they said, uh, yeah, innocent blood, but no big deal.

[00:04:46] Um, what's for breakfast?

[00:04:51] No, we know. Okay.

[00:04:53] Lord, I'm, I'm a, I'm a sinner through and through and I need your grace and we acknowledge it.

[00:05:00] We confess it and we receive the grace of God.

[00:05:03] What a wonderful truth that is based on the word of God.

[00:05:08] And that's why I declare to you daily truths from the word.

[00:05:13] And that is today's daily truth.

[00:05:14] Have a great day in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[00:05:17] Thank you for tuning in to daily truths with Dave Allman.

[00:05:20] Pastor Dave Allman is the pastor of Mount Hope Church in Boulder, Colorado.

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[00:05:36] Come back tomorrow for your next daily truth.