Intro

Well, as you heard Fred pray just a few moments ago, and then as you heard read, we have a fairly heavy topic to cover this morning. As I’ve prayed this week about how much we need to get into this subject in order to rightly understand this portion of God’s Word, I hope and pray I have landed in a place that doesn’t make anyone unnecessarily uncomfortable. I know that in this room there are many who’s lives have been impacted and, in some cases, permanently changed by suicide. I know that it is not an easy topic to address. 

But what I can promise, is that we will only go as far with this subject today as there is hope and redemption to be found in it. And let me just say as well, if you or someone you love is currently struggling through something like this, I or any of the other pastors here would love to connect you with community and with some of the many help and care resources available. As I was processing this with some of the mental health counselors in our congregation, one of them made a very helpful point that convinced me of the necessity of fully addressing this subject. She pointed out that so many of the people who struggle with temptation to take their own lives are usually doing so out of a place of hopelessness fueled by isolation. 

To be clear, hopelessness doesn’t just mean being sad, it means giving up on the idea of ever being happy. And one of the major catalysts for turning sadness into hopelessness, and by extension a desire not to live anymore, is isolation. People can handle even profound sadness in community. But when you add sadness to isolation, you have a recipe for hopelessness. And one of the most isolating things for a Christian is believing that the church is not a place for their sadness. Believing that the church is a place where you check your problems, your sadness, your hopelessness, and your despair at the door and we all agree to be happy instead for 75 minutes. 

When you are grieving, if you start to believe that your sadness is not allowed in church - that you must grieve in private, away from what everyone else is doing, and only show up herewhen you’re able to play happy, church will very quickly become a place you don’t want to be and don’t feel welcome in. And so we can talk all day about the sermon on the mount in theory but if we don’t then also make space to talk about things like this, we will quickly become a place that functionally teaches “banished are those who mourn until they can manage to comfort themselves.” So if you’re here this morning and you don’t want to talk about suicide in church then I get it. Me either. But we’re going to. Because this is a place for dealing with even those kinds of things. However, that’s not the only thing or the first thing we will spend time on. 

So, with that said, let me give you a brief sketch of what I hope to show you today. This passage is a bit of a theological nerve cluster - meaning there is a lot of important and sensitive topics all bunched up together impacting one another. So first, we need to tease some of those threads apart to get a sense of what’s going on here. We’ll do that by examining the other relevant biblical texts and how they contribute to our understanding of the three key roles in this story. Second, after having gained an understanding of what’s actually being said here, we will then deal with some of the hard questions and implications that this passage raises. Third and finally, we will see what hope is being offered here for sinners and sufferers of all kinds. Put most simply, we’ll be talking about the Roles, the Questions, and the Hope in this text. So first,

The Roles

One of the hardest things about this text and the other New Testament passages that reference the same story is that they all connect them directly and explicitly to Old Testament prophecy. What that means is that we don’t just have a descriptive account of somebody doing something horrible. We have an account of somebody doing something horrible and the Word of God saying that it happened according to God’s plan. That’s not something we can just gloss over. Moreover, there are actually three different New Testament texts that contribute something different to our understanding of what’s going on here, so we need to take the time to at least briefly consider them. First, of course, is the passage we read today. But there’s also Acts 1:15-20. And, I have to warn you, this one is hard to read and somewhat graphic.

In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, 16 “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. 17 For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” 18 (Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. 19 And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language [H]Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) 20 “For it is written in the Book of Psalms,

   “ ‘May his camp become desolate,

   and let there be no one to dwell in it’;

and

   “ ‘Let another take his office.’

So Peter refers to this thing that Judas did and says this happened because the Scripture had to be fulfilled. But what Old Testament prophecy are we talking about here, and why did it have to be fulfilled? And fulfilled in this way, no less… Peter is actually referencing two different Psalms here. The first is Psalm 69, specifically verse 25, and the second is Psalm 109, verse 8. Both of these are psalms of David. It doesn’t say specifically what context David prayed them in, possibly when he was being betrayed and persecuted by his son, Absalom. But he prays to God not just to save him, but to judge those who persecute him. And what’s really interesting about Psalm 69 in particular is how often it is quoted by or in reference to Christ. In John 15, Jesus quotes verse 4 of this Psalm, “[they] hate me without cause” and he says the Jews hate him in order to fulfill that Scripture. In John 2, the disciples see Jesus cleansing the Temple and they remember that it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me” and see Jesus as the fulfillment of that quote, which is found in verse 9 of this Psalm. All four gospels make a point of noting that Jesus was given, “sour wine” while he was on the Cross, clearly showing a fulfillment of verse 22. 

Paul even picks up on this in Romans 11, when he quotes verse 22 of this Psalm to explain why the Jews have rejected Jesus, and again in Romans 15 where he quotes verse 9, “the reproach of those who reproach you have fallen on me” to prove that Jesus came to take away sin. So when Peter stands up in Acts 1 and applies Psalm 69:25 to Judas, he’s not doing anything particularly novel. He’s saying, “look, we all know what this Psalm is about.” For the Apostles, these Psalms are clearly prophecies about Christ and those who persecute him wrongfully. But how? There is nothing in them that is necessarily predictive.. They don’t say, “One day this will happen to the Messiah and these will be his words concerning the situation.” Rather, these are songs written by David because of real life situations that actually happened to him first. So why do they need to be fulfilled? 

Because all of Scripture up to this point has been a dress rehearsal for Christ. It’s all been practice for Him. After Jesus is risen, in Luke 25 meets the disciples on the road to Emaus and beginning with Moses and the prophets, he explained how all the Scriptures are concerning him. When we talk about the idea of fulfillment, particularly in the way that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament Scriptures, we don’t just mean what’s called “predictive” prophecy, like when Isaiah specifically says the Messiah will be born of a virgin. We also mean the fulfillment of prophetic patterns. And this is one of the main ways that the New Testament authors see Jesus fulfilling Scripture. They see him being the culmination - the ultimate expression of these patterns and roles that have been cropping up through history. That’s what we mean when we say that Jesus is the true and better David. Or Jesus is the true Prophet. We are doing what the New Testament does when, for example, Hebrews opens by saying that long ago God spoke by the prophets, but now he has spoken by his Son who is effectively the ultimate prophet, the greater Moses, the true and better tabbernacle, the perfect sacrifice, and the effective priest - as Hebrews goes on to point out. 

So Peter is saying these things didn’t just happen by coincidence, they were the ultimate and greatest expression of these ancient patterns that have been happening throughout redemptive history. And that’s what’s going on in Matthew 27 as well. Matthew creates what’s called a “composite” quotation, where you combine quotes from two prophets but you only cite the more well-known one. Like if I were to talk about the New Covenant and say, “Jeremiah talks about a new day when all God’s people will know him from the least to the greatest, and he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and even on your male and female servants I will pour out my Spirit.” What chapter of the Old Testament am I talking about? Well, if you know your Old Testament, you know that the first half is from Jeremiah 31, but the second half is technically from Joel 2. So what, am I deceiving you? No. I’m summarizing. The New Covenant is a major topic in the Old Testament, and several prophets contribute to our understanding of this one big idea. I mentioned the main one, but then I also quoted from a lesser known one talking about the same thing. 

Matthew 27 quotes Jeremiah 19, because that’s the first and most significant place where the Potter theme is mentioned. But actually, most of that quote is from Zechariah 11, where the Potter story is later revisited - this time also mentioning 30 pieces of silver. Basically, in both Jeremiah 19 and Zechariah 11, you have a story of a prophet praying for judgment on the evil leaders of Israel who are persecuting him. In Jeremiah 19, God tells Jeremiah to perform a prophetic sign against the evil leaders, where he goes to a potter and buys a jar made of clay. And he is to take that jar and smash it in front of the leaders of Israel as a sign of what will happen to them if they don’t repent. And then in Zechariah 11, God tells Zechariah to also perform a prophetic sign against the leaders of Israel, who he calls false shepherds. He had appointed the priests and teachers of the law as shepherds over his people to care for them, but instead they had sold the sheep - that is the people, for food to be consumed by the nations. 

So God tells Zechariah that he will cause the sheep traders to be taken captive like the sheep they got rich off of selling. And God told him to go take a job as a shepherd for a day, which he did. And when he asked for his wages, he was given 30 pieces of silver - which is an excessive amount for a day of shepherding. A “lordly price,” as Zechariah calls it, which was a sign of how the shepherds over Israel were making way more than they should have been because they were profiting off the sheep instead of caring of them. So God tells Zechariah not to accept the payment, but to take the 30 pieces of silver and throw them to the potter who works in the Temple. 

And Matthew sort of combines these two stories together with a composite quotation, signifying that they are really two different angles on the same story. A story that was unfolding for real in his gospel. So now we have all three major roles. We have the prophet, who is Christ, praying for salvation from and judgment on those who are unjustly persecuting him. Then we have the sheep traders, aka the chief priest and the elders of Israel. The ones who pay 30 pieces of silver they shouldn’t have. The ones who got that wealth by abusing the sheep and selling them for food instead of caring for them. Finally, the Potter’s vessel. The jar that is set before the sheep traders, smashed so that its contents spill out, signifying God’s wrath against those who abuse his people. This is Judas. And these poor, foolish sheep traders are so busy conspiring to kill the prophet that they don’t realize they are taking the Potter’s wages of 30 pieces of silver and using it to buy the potter’s field, the very place where the potter’s vessel had just been smashed. If that feels like a lot is going on there, it’s because it is. The days leading up to the crucifixion are like the final battle scene of the Avengers movies where all these different characters and stories come together at once, and you need to have seen all the different movies to really appreciate what’s going on here. 

The Questions

So now at least we’ve untangled most of the nerve cluster of passages and roles that all make up this story. But this story should leave us with some questions, and as of yet, it hasn’t offered much hope. So we have a little more work to do and I have to warn you, it gets a little harder before it gets better. Because there’s one more New Testament passage that provides an angle on this story. In John 17, we have an account of Jesus’ prayer for his disciples at the last supper, right before they entered the Garden of Gethsemane. In this prayer he asks the Father to guard his disciples after he is no longer with them. He prays, “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”

So, this raises a couple of questions. “Not one of them has been lost, except…” We in the Reformed tradition like to think about Jesus’ ability to keep and preserve his people as being absolute. So this sounds like an exception to that. Like, he can keep his own except when he decides not to. And moreover, this is the most direct indication, from Jesus himself, that Judas was born for destruction, and his being lost was “to fulfill the Scripture” - in other words, “according to plan.” So if you’re in a place in life right now where you are concerned about Jesus’ ability to keep and preserve you through the grief, the sorrow, the mistakes, or the sin in your life, then this passage has the potential to stand as a cautionary tale of how making a bad enough choice or a doubting a little too much can get you labeled a son or daughter of destruction - an exception to the preserving work of Christ. So if we are in here today looking for hope, which we are, then we need to get through some of these questions to get to it. 

We’ll start with the easier one first - “not one of them has been lost except…” Well, to find out what you can be an exception to, we need to figure out what “them” is. The first part of the passage kinda makes it sound like he’s talking about all Christians, calling them, “the people whom you gave me out of the world” and “[those who] have believed that you sent me.” But in addition to the past-tense language here, Jesus gets a little more specific in verse 20 when he says, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” This makes it pretty clear that when he says “them” he’s talking about the Apostles in particular since he refers to them as those he was with and whose words will lead to the salvation of many. So when he says “I’ve lost none of them except the son of destruction” - he’s not saying “I’ve lost none of the believers, except…” therefore implicitly establishing a category of believers who can be lost. Rather he’s saying, “I’ve lost none of the 12 except the son of destruction, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.” 

But in some ways this both helps and hurts. Because you still end up with a very clear statement that at least one man in human history was born to be destroyed, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. And if you’re looking at this and making some doctrinal extrapolations I don’t think you’re the only one. Consider Paul’s language in Romans 9. It feels… intentional to me. In 9:15 he writes, 

“[God]says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy… So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. 19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?”

And here Paul clarifies the one role that we haven’t directly addressed - the one that’s been in the background the whole time… We talked about the sheep traders, the prophet, and the potter’s vessel, but now we see the Potter himself. And Paul’s answer to the question of, “Does God make some people for destruction?” appears to be… “Yes.” So, you mean Judas was destroyed because of God’s plan, and he wasn’t necessarily the only one? I know this isn’t hopeful sounding yet, just stick with me a little further. 

The Hope

Paul, Zechariah, Jeremiah, and Matthew are all zeroed in on this pottery metaphor so it must be pretty important. And this isn’t the only place that Paul uses it. Look at 2 Timothy 2. “Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. 21 Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.” This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First off, how in the world is a vessel supposed to cleanse itself? We’ll get to that in a minute. But what’s interesting is that, instead of presenting it as a dichotomy between vessels that were honorable from the beginning and those that were dishonorable from the beginning, you actually have a framework where apparently all the vessels were at one time dishonorable, and are given the choice to cleanse themselves and become vessels for honorable use. This doesn’t contradict Paul’s prior use of the metaphor, but it does add some nuance. God is preparing vessels for honorable use and dishonorable use out of the same lump of clay, as he said in Romans 9. But what he’s saying here is that the process of shaping an honorable vessel actually involves it starting out as a dishonorable one. 

And you know what, that actually makes perfect sense. Because Romans 9 uses two adjectives to describe God’s creation of vessels for honorable use, and those words are “Mercy” and “compassion.” “For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” But, when a potter takes a fresh lump of pure clay and turns it straight into a beautiful vase you don’t really call it “compassionate” or “merciful...” So the sculpting that Paul has in mind in Romans 9 is, I think, more akin to when a potter takes a lump of hardened, discarded, cracked clay out of the trash, breaks it into tiny pieces and soaks them in water to rehydrate them, and forms it into something that is undeservedly beautiful. 

In 2nd Timothy, right after Paul tells Timothy that if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, they can actually become an honorable vessel, he then says that the Lord’s servant must be kind to everyone - even gentle towards his enemies, because you never know, God might grant his enemies repentance. So he’s saying, look, you should be kind to those hardened lumps of clay that oppose you. You were one of those. And you never know when the Potter is going to reach in, grab one of them, break them apart, and reshape them into something amazing. Because it doesn’t depend on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. Never assume someone is too far gone.

Well there’s a spark of hope there but it’s not enough yet. We need to fan it. Because if choosing to cleanse yourself is the way in, does that make me better than the vessels who don’t make that choice? And what’s to stop me from later choosing to dishonor myself? Like, ok, I can repent and stop being a vessel for destruction, great, but my track record is not great so far. I have been known to mess things up before, and I’ll do it again if given the opportunity. If Judas, one of the Apostles - can make a horrible choice like that, what’s going to stop me from doing the same or worse? And here’s where the hope is hidden right in the middle of the hard stuff. Because pottery isn’t the only metaphor Paul and Matthew use to describe our fallen and redeemed statuses. And that metaphor alone isn’t enough to give hope. Thankfully, they also use the metaphor of sonship. 

Judas, for one, is called the “Son of destruction” in John 17. Someone born from and into destruction - as all of us are by nature. But the saddest news for Judas is the most hopeful news for us. Because “destruction” isn’t the only source of sonship in John’s gospel. John chapter 1 talks about a different type of sonship. Speaking of Jesus and starting in verse 9, John writes, 

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

So Judas was born in blood, lived to betray innocent blood, and died in the field of blood. A son of Destruction from beginning to end, he was numbered among the Apostles but not among the repentant. The word used of Judas’ sadness in Matthew 27 is a very specific word that can mean changing your mind, realizing you’ve made a mistake, or regreatting what you’ve done, but it doesn’t mean repentance. And, just to prepare you, this is where we need to talk for just a few moments about the very difficult subject of suicide. Because, as Jim pointed out last week, if Judas really was repentant, then it would have driven him to Christ like Peter rather than to a rope. However, people look at his story and ask hard questions but then they settle for quick and easy answers. So they say foolish and unbiblical things, like teaching that Judas went to hell because he committed suicide. As if suicide is some unforgivable sin. They say you can’t be forgiven for suicide because you die before you can repent. But that totally misses the mark. Unrepentance was the cause of Judas’s death, not the result. 

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everybody who takes their own life does so because they aren’t trusting in God, or that this is the inevitable result of not trusting in God. But I have walked through conversations about suicide with an unusual amount of people in my relatively short life. Peers, teens, mentors. Young and old, addicts and sober. Last week Jim mentioned a woman in our previous church named Amanda who took her own life. In the months before she did that, she had asked me to read and edit her memoir, a work that outlined all of the pain she had experienced in life, from childhood abuse, to homelessness, to the horrors she experienced while serving in the military. What surprised me most is that she had written it as an ultimately redemptive book - intended to show how, despite all of that, Jesus had continued to be faithful to her. She battled depression her whole life and, on a really bad day, she made a really awful choice. But I knew her well enough to know that wasn’t the day Jesus let go of her, it was just the day he stopped interceding for her and started wiping the tears from her eyes. 

Now I’ve been cautioned before that teaching people that suicide isn’t the unforgivable sin is bad because it could make people feel better about making that choice.  A decade ago, when I was working as a middle school youth pastor, a rash of suicides went through the district where most of my students were in school. Thankfully no one in my youth group was personally involved, but they all knew somebody who died and some of the kids had professed to be Christians. And in the name of trying to stop the spread, my boss, the High School Youth Pastor, was teaching that anyone who makes that choice probably wasn’t really saved. And so now all my students are grieving both the loss and the proclaimed condemnation of their friends. And church quickly became a place where those teens knew better than to talk about it. Better to just check the grief at the door and focus on the pizza and the games. But you know what major question that approach left unanswered for the teens who just lost their friends? If Jesus let them go, how do I know he’s going to hold on to me? If they weren’t really saved, how do I know I am? And we’d be ignorant to think that the story of Judas couldn’t raise that same questions. 

A couple weeks back my wife and I took our two kids to disney for the first time. At 5 and almost 4 years old, we figured they were finally ready to appreciate that very expensive magic. We had been talking about and planning for this trip for years. And that was, I believe, the only day this year where it rained for a full 12 consecutive hours. It was miserable out. The kids shoes were soaked through within the first 5 minutes. We got ponchos which simply managed to create a distinction between internal and external moisture but did not actually keep anything dry. My kids very quickly became tired of walking, and it was cold, and there were strangers everywhere. So it was a day full of piggy backs. And between the fact that my daughter’s arms aren’t long enough to reach around my neck yet and that we were wearing ponchos in the rain so she was slippery and had no ability to hang on, my arms were screaming. 

We were getting ready to head back when the fireworks started. And we were right in between bell’s castle and cinderella’s castle, so the fireworks were criscrossing over our heads. A feature which my children apparently categorized as personally experiencing surface to air warfare. So those kids wanted UP DADDY. And it didn’t matter that it was raining and my arms are tired, they were terrified and so that’s what they got. And they weren’t really asking. They were assuming. They are scared, dad is here, so, up. And that’s frankly a perfectly reasonable assumption. It’s like the main reason I go to the gym. We actually named the big log at my gym “my kid” because all of us there like to joke and say “I’m just training to be able to pick up my kid as long as possible.” But the log isn’t named “some kid.” And at disney that night, there were plenty of kids who were scared that I did not pick up. They frown on picking up kids that aren’t yours there. So there were plenty of kids walking around in soggy shoes not getting piggy backs from me that day. But out of the approximately 50,000 kids that come through the doors of Disney World every day - two of them are mine. 

When the rain is pouring, and it gets dark, and the fireworks start, we don’t have a negotiation. And they don’t walk up to each adult in the park and ask for a ride. They know me, I know them, it’s not a conversation. And that’s true of me - a man who’s arms get tired, who gets grumpy around hour 9 or 10 at disney world, and who is imperfect in a plethora of ways. But if I, who am weak and evil, know how to give good piggy back rides to my kids even when it’s hard, how much more will my Father in heaven hold me fast. This is the sort of access that John says we have. To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Listen, this is more than just making a choice of what kind of pottery you’ll be identified as. This is rebirth. Jesus is giving the right to have your personal history rewritten, such that you don’t just have the dignity of a clean mug on a shelf, you have the rights of a child in the family.

And look at how Jesus brags about his Father. He tells the sheep traders in John 10, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me,1 is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

Look, I get it, there are times when the Father takes you to places that are dark, and rainy, and cold, and it feels very hard to hold on. But Judas is not an exception to the rule. He’s not the son who got let down, he’s an example of someone who chose to try and punish themselves instead of asking for the Father’s forgiveness. And he’s not the only example we have. Because we also have an older brother. And the comparison between Jesus and Judas could not be more striking. Two sons, one from and to the Father, one from and to destruction. Both went of their own volition to bear a curse and hang on a tree. Both spilled their blood for sin. On death accomplished nothing but the fulfillment of the Scriptures - a sign to the wicked sheep traders of the punishment that follows unrepentance. The other death accomplished everything. The Potter incarnated into his own claymation world, willingly dying at the hands of his creation who didn’t know him, to serve as a sign to the children of God that it is finished, they will not be let go.

If you are feeling let go of, or facing the temptation to let go yourself, the message isn’t “if you give up you’ll be punished.” It’s that you can keep hanging on because he’s stronger than you. If you’re tempted to try and punish yourself for whatever mistakes you’ve made, you need to know that he hung on a tree for you, and is offering you the chance to be reborn into a new family where you deserve the Father’s affection instead of deserving his wrath. True religion isn’t about working up enough fear or self-condemnation to do better, it’s about going to the Father and asking him to make you his. And if you’ve done that, quit doubting whether or not he’s strong enough to keep you. If he can reach down and pull Jesus out of the grave he can hold onto you.