Matthew 27:1-10 | Ted Tash

[0:00] Good morning. Not a joke. I had a dream about giving this message today. Last night, woke up in the middle of the night with it.

[0:11] I don't know if you guys have ever had those dreams where nothing goes right. No matter what you do, it's going wrong. It was one of those dreams where nothing went right. In fact, I was at Bethel, the building of Bethel, but it wasn't Bethel.

[0:30] The church. No one from Bethel was here. Actually, there was one person from Bethel. I'll get to that. But it was a totally different crowd. It was really weird. I was sitting in Brad's spot in the back, which is also not my spot. It was weird.

[0:45] Some guy, had no clue who it was, was doing announcements. Some guy, had no clue who it was, was doing the singing. That guy in the dream didn't dismiss the kids. So then when I got up, I dismissed the kids. Well, then everybody left.

[0:57] It was weird. And then by the time we came back in, it was 1130. And then I was, I was like in the book of Acts, which is not where the passage was.

[1:09] And I couldn't remember where the passage was. And then the only, he's not in here. He was here though. The only person from Bethel that ended up being there was Clint. And he was sitting like right where Kevin Clint sits.

[1:23] And he was talking the whole message. It was the strangest thing. So anyway, that is what I was waking up with in the middle of the night. No idea.

[1:34] We're in Matthew chapter 27. I got to tell you, in all my life, going, you know, to whatever church I've gone to, I mean, since I was a little kid, never heard a message on this passage.

[1:48] This is the passage where Judas hands the money back and goes and takes his own life. And never have I ever heard this message given. So we're going to, we're going to give it a go today.

[2:01] We're going to end up looking at a decent amount of the prophecy about this event, which, you know, if you had asked me maybe a month or two ago what I knew about that prophecy, I would say probably next to nothing.

[2:15] So that has been a good study for me. It's actually a pretty heavily prophesied event, which we'll see. I'm by no means a prophecy expert, but that'll be kind of what we look at.

[2:27] But just one other disclaimer, not the most practical application message. In fact, when I talked to John Messerly about it a couple weeks ago, he said, yeah, this isn't the message where you say, yeah, go and do the same.

[2:45] Which was John's joke. So if you have a problem with that, take it with John. But anyway, there'll be a lot more of like just a factual, this is what happened, and then my spin on the little bit of prophecy we look at.

[2:59] So just kind of a explanatory message, maybe not quite as applicatory, practical message today. But let's pray and then we'll get into it. Father God, just thanks for the day.

[3:09] We know that your word is good and it doesn't return void. And we know that every word in it, Lord, is inspired by you and your Holy Spirit. And so we're thankful for that. And we just pray the blessing of it as we read and study it today.

[3:22] We pray all this in Jesus' name. All right. So Matthew 27, and we have the first 10 verses. And we're going to read through about verse 5 to start with.

[3:35] But before we do that, just a little bit more of setting the scene where we're at. We just had the Thursday before the crucifixion. Some people call it like Maundy Thursday.

[3:48] They had the Last Supper. Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed. Judas betrayed him. He gets arrested. We just had Peter denying Jesus.

[4:00] And then he goes out and weeps bitterly. And then now in 27 verse 1, it says, When morning came. And that morning would be the morning of, like, Good Friday. And so by 3 o'clock or so that day, Jesus would be dead.

[4:16] Now there's a lot of passages between here and that that we're going to look at over the next couple of weeks. But that's kind of where we're at. And, you know, the cross was just really such a terrible place.

[4:28] And it was a bad place for a lot of people. You know, obviously Peter denied Jesus. He goes out, weeps bitterly. That's tough for Peter. And we know from earlier all the disciples kind of denied Jesus and had some troubles there.

[4:44] You think Mary was at the cross. Remember the exchange with John, like, Behold your mother. You know, that had to be tough for Mary. In the book of John, it says that Nicodemus was there who had kind of secretly been following Jesus the whole time.

[4:59] He had come to Jesus in the night secretly. And then he comes and helps with the burial. And so that had to be tough for him. You know, he probably was risking a lot by following Jesus while being part of the religious group.

[5:10] And to see Jesus get killed, that had to be tough. Obviously, Jesus himself on the cross, not a good time, had the separation from God. But, man, Judas is right up there with people that are having a real bad day.

[5:22] And that's what we're going to see here is that, obviously, this led him to taking his own life. And so chapter 27, verse 1, When morning, again, that would be Good Friday morning, came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.

[5:42] So there they are, the chief priests and the elders coming together to put Jesus to death. And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate, the governor.

[5:55] Then, when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.

[6:12] They said, What is that to us? See to it yourself. In throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed and he went and hanged himself.

[6:26] You know, just a couple interesting observations. Judas was with Jesus the whole time. You know, he was one of the disciples. He was in the inner group of people that Jesus hung out with.

[6:38] And it's really interesting, just to me, how somebody could be that close to Jesus for such a long time and honestly had to have gone out and done ministry in Jesus' name and to just never know him, you know, as Savior.

[6:51] It's just an interesting thing. I don't really know what else to say other than that. You know, there's an old gospel tune called, He Made a Change, which probably no one has heard.

[7:02] And the first verse is, Paul met the Lord on the Damascus Road and never was the same again. Peter met the Lord in the fishing boat and started fishing for the souls of men.

[7:15] And then the line is, I can't say I'm Peter or Paul, but the one thing I can truly say is when I met the Lord, he definitely made a change. And you see that all throughout here.

[7:27] You see just every person that Jesus interacted with, it had some effect on them. Whether it was good or bad. You know, you have people like the rich young ruler who went away sad. You know, Jesus said, You've done a great job, but you need to sell your possessions.

[7:40] And, ah, he goes away sad. But there's still a change. You know, there's still some effect. And yet it just seems totally lost on Judas. He was with him the whole time.

[7:51] And really, until it's almost too late, does he realize what he's done. And that's just interesting to me. Like I said, I don't know if there's anything you can really draw out of that other than it's noteworthy.

[8:05] Again, John Messerly, when he gave his message on Jesus predicting the betrayal by Judas, he did a really good job. He went to John 6 and talked about the bread of life.

[8:16] And he was talking about how Jesus was saying, I'm offering you spiritual bread. And the Jews were saying, no, we want physical bread. We want this physical bread. He said, no, I'm the bread of life. They're like, yeah, we want the bread.

[8:26] He said, no, of life. They said, no, we want the bread. And then he took it to where Jesus, as he predicts the betrayal from Judas, dipped the morsel of bread and gave it to Judas.

[8:38] Almost like saying, here, Judas, you want the bread? Here it is. And so he missed it. Judas calls Jesus rabbi. You know, you're a teacher. But he never calls him Lord. You know, Peter had confessed Jesus as Lord.

[8:50] You are the Christ, the son of the living God. But to Judas, Jesus was just a teacher. So again, don't read into that. There's nothing to say other than it's just interesting. Judas had hung out with him and been with him in that inner circle for three years plus.

[9:07] And goes on to betray him. Then another thing that's kind of interesting. Some of your versions, I think the King James says that he repented in verse 3. It's a different word, a very similar word.

[9:20] The English Standard says he changed his mind. In verse 4, he confesses his sin. He says, I have sinned.

[9:31] So it's almost like he's close, right? He's like almost repenting. He's like kind of confessing. But who is he confessing to? He's confessing to the wrong group. He's confessing to the chief priests and the elders.

[9:42] And they have no power to forgive sin, right? And so left hopeless, they say, what is that to us? See to it yourself.

[9:55] It reminds me in like Proverbs chapter 1 where the writer says, you know, hey, don't go with these guys that are spreading out nets because they're going to entangle themselves. Don't go with those that lie in wait for blood, right?

[10:07] Because in the end, it's their life that gets caught. And that's exactly what happens. What is that to us? See to it yourself. So throwing down the pieces of silver, he departed and went and hanged himself.

[10:19] Now we get a little more follow-up on this in the book of Acts. If you want to just flip over there real quick, Acts chapter 1, just so we can kind of see the end all be all of Judas here.

[10:34] Acts chapter 1, verse 15. The disciples and some other brethren are together. And in Acts 1, verse 15, it says this, In those days Peter stood up among the brothers.

[10:49] The company of persons was in all about 120. And he said, 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.

[11:08] So here, I guess it would be Luke writing the book of Acts, is saying, There is some prophecy about Judas. The scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David.

[11:23] Verse 17, He was numbered among us and allotted his share in this ministry. A little bit of a gross warning here. Verse 18, Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness.

[11:36] In falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out. They say it's one of the worst ways to go. Burst in the middle, all his bowels gushed out.

[11:49] Now, I always kind of wondered, like as a little kid, that was like the funniest verse, you know, his bowels gushed out. I was wondering, did he like jump off the cliff? But no, I think what happened is, he had hung himself at some various point of decay.

[12:01] He had fallen, and then the bowels gushed out. Anyway, that's the end of Judas. And it became known, verse 19, To all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, So that the field was called in their own language, Echodema, that is, the field of blood.

[12:18] For it is written in the book of Psalms, two prophecies here about Judas. May his camp become desolate, And let there be no one to dwell in it.

[12:29] And let another take his office. So there was this prophecy beforehand from David That Judas' spot in the ministry, Judas' spot as a disciple, Would be vacated.

[12:42] And not only that, that there should be another person to come in and fill that vacancy. And so that's what we'll see here. Again, just to go through kind of the facts of what happened. Verse 21, So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, Beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us, One of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.

[13:09] So the qualification here was that they had to be with him all the way from the start of his ministry, When he got baptized, All the way through the ascension. That was kind of the qualifications that they laid out for whoever this person were to be.

[13:25] Verse 23, They put forward two. Joseph, called Barsabbas, who was also called Justice. Guy had a lot of names. I don't know. And Matthias.

[13:36] And they prayed and said, You, Lord, know the hearts of all. Show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.

[13:51] They cast lots. The lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles. So that verse 25, that's kind of the end-all-be-all of Judas. That is the conclusion of his story.

[14:04] He had turned aside from the ministry and the apostleship to go to his own place. You know, Dave Thomas said this, but it's not original to him.

[14:18] You don't see a lot of kids named Judas, right? Adolph and Judas are kind of the two, like, no-name, no-go names. And man, what a shame, because you have Peter's. I mean, we have a boatload of Davids here, John's, Paul's.

[14:33] Man, Judas could have been right there with him. He was so close. But he chased after the physical things, the silver, the bread, not the bread of life.

[14:44] And that was his demise. He hung himself and at some point fell, and he went his own way. And so that's the end of Judas. It's kind of a sad note to end on.

[14:58] But we know that it was prophesied beforehand, and we see that Matthias went and replaced Judas in his apostleship. So let's look a little bit more at our passage.

[15:12] And this also covers a little bit more of the prophecy around Judas. And so then we'll spend the rest of the time looking at that. So back in Matthew 27, we can look at verse 6 here.

[15:34] It says this, But the chief priest, taking the pieces of silver, said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money. I get a chuckle out of that verse, because, again, verse 1, or verse, yeah, 1.

[15:50] Those same chief priests were taking counsel against Jesus to put him to death. It's exactly what Jesus said. It's like you are straining the gnat of what is lawful to do with his money, but you are swallowing the camel of conspiracy to murder.

[16:06] It is the chief priest in a nutshell. It's not lawful to take this blood money. Yeah. Verse 7, So they took counsel, and they bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers.

[16:23] Therefore that field has been called the field of blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, and the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel.

[16:41] And they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me. So, again, we see some prophecy. Chief priests, the elders, they say, What do we do with this money?

[16:51] They say, We know. We'll buy this field, and we can let strangers bury people in the field. The idea is that this was such an insignificant amount of money, there wasn't much else to do with it.

[17:04] That's kind of the general sense. And so, they buy this potter's field. And then in verse 9 and 10, Matthew quotes one of the prophecies that we're going to look at in a minute.

[17:20] And he attributes the quote to Jeremiah. Now, this is a bit interesting, a bit confusing. He says, This fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. And then he quotes from the book of Zechariah, which is kind of an interesting deal.

[17:36] Looking into that, there are three distinct prophecies about the potter's field. Or I shouldn't say about the potter's field. About the potter and also fields from Jeremiah.

[17:48] And then the exact quote here is from Zechariah. And that's the only potter's field prophecy that Zechariah had. So, why say Jeremiah?

[17:59] The best guess that a couple commentators had was that Jeremiah was the major prophet. Zechariah was a minor prophet. And so, perhaps the quote, you know, attribution should have gone to Jeremiah because he was a major prophet.

[18:12] I don't know. But I know that he mentions Jeremiah by name and then does a direct quote from Zechariah. So, there's that.

[18:26] Go ahead and turn, if you will, to Jeremiah 18. I want to spend kind of the rest of our time just looking at this. We're going to look at two of these in Jeremiah to begin with.

[18:40] And again, these are the prophecies in Jeremiah and Zechariah about the potter. About the potter's field. About these earthen vessels. And I need to have a huge asterisk right here.

[18:54] That I am by no means a prophecy expert. By zero means whatsoever. I did spend a decent amount of time looking at this. The thing that always trips me up with prophecies, it's hard to tell.

[19:06] Is it talking about the end times? Is it talking about, like, the BC times? Like, with the exile and the return to Jerusalem? Is it talking about AD 70 when, like, Jerusalem got destroyed then?

[19:19] That is always hard for me to figure out. I did my best. But I want to throw that out there. Big asterisk. I'm by no means a prophecy expert.

[19:30] But all of these prophecies, again, whether they're talking about early times, AD 70, end times, they all speak of the destruction of Israel.

[19:41] And they all speak of the Lord turning away from Israel. So however you want to paint it, all of these prophecies are about it. Obviously, when Jesus is crucified, he's betrayed.

[19:54] The religious group of the Israelites puts him to death. God's wrath then comes out upon Israel. All of these prophecies, again, have to do with the potter, have to do with the silver, have to do with some fields.

[20:12] Obviously, Matthew brought them up and referenced them here. So I think they all go together. Like I said, I'm not going to die on that hill. But I thought these were interesting, and I think we should look at them.

[20:23] So in Jeremiah 18, verse 1, it says this, So he's going to the potter's house.

[20:39] So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

[20:59] So he's making a vessel of some kind. It gets ruined. It gets spoiled. He makes another one. He reworks it, because that seemed like the right thing to do.

[21:11] Verse 5, Then the word of the Lord came to me, O house of Israel. Can I, the Lord, not do with you, Israel, as this potter has done, declares the Lord.

[21:23] Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. Then he goes on for a couple of verses here, talking about the destruction and the disaster and everything.

[21:37] But it's just an interesting thought. He's talking about this potter, and he's saying, You know, Israel, if you're ruined, I can make another pot. I can bring something else in here.

[21:50] Verse 11, Now therefore say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you, and devising a plan against you.

[22:02] Return everyone from his evil way, and amend your ways and deeds. So here we have this warning to Israel, saying, There's going to be judgment. There's another nation I could bring in.

[22:16] I can rework this thing. So that's the first potter prophecy. The second one is in the very next chapter there, Jeremiah 19. In this, there's a flask that gets made.

[22:32] And this is what it says, 19 verse 1 says, Thus says the Lord, Go buy a potter's earthenware flask. Take some of the elders and the people and some of the elders of the priests.

[22:44] Go to this place. Verse 3, You shall say, Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears it will tingle.

[23:06] He's saying, I am bringing a calamity on this place. It is going to be a disaster. It is going to be so bad that even just hearing about it is going to make you hurt. And he goes on.

[23:21] It's kind of interesting. In here, he goes on talking about they're going to bury people in this place, which kind of is a reference to the field. He goes on and talks all about the destruction all the way through verse 8, verse 9.

[23:36] Some really tough words to read in there. Verse 9, I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. Just some crazy stuff. But then verse 10, it says this, Then you shall break the flask, so this potter's flask, you shall break it in the sight of the men who go with you, and shall say to them, Thus says the Lord, So I will break this people and this city, Jerusalem, as one breaks a potter's vessel, so that it can never be mended.

[24:09] Men shall bury in Topheth, which is the new name this place is going to get, because there will be no place else to bury. So again, we're talking kind of about this potter, this field, this place where they bury people.

[24:23] And again, the main thing is that he takes this potter's flask and breaks it and says, This people, this Jewish nation, in this city of Jerusalem, is going to be broken so that it can never be mended.

[24:36] There's some big, strong words. I know it's a lot of prophecy. Flip with me to Zechariah, if you will, 11. This is where the actual quote comes from.

[24:48] I told Brad, I just spoke at the beginning of August, and in preparing for this, which was already a pretty short window, I ended up reading like a third of Jeremiah and like all of Zechariah, so I do feel underprepared for this message, because all my prep time went to reading these books that sent my head spinning.

[25:07] So anyway, nothing better than like starting your day with that and then walking down the hall to your office in your bedroom and having your mind in like 100 different places on minor prophecy.

[25:18] But that was the last couple weeks. It was fun. So this is the passage. Again, it's going to be the same theme, Israel being destroyed, that Matthew actually quotes.

[25:32] We'll start in verse 1. It says, Open your doors, O Lebanon, Zechariah 11. Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars. A lot of the commentators say that this is talking about the destruction of the temple, which that would have happened in AD 70.

[25:51] Because the cedars of Lebanon were what the temple was constructed out of. This is like right around the time when Ezra would have been reconstructing the temple, the second temple.

[26:04] And I guess supposedly this is extra biblical, but in like AD 42, the doors to the temple like swung open on their own. And again, that's an extra biblical account.

[26:16] But it was like well known amongst the Jews that that had happened and they took it to this prophecy that the doors had been opened and so they were on guard that the temple was going to be burned down. Again, that's extra biblical, but that happened.

[26:33] So we get some prophecy about the destruction of the temple. And then verse 4, the Lord tells Zechariah to become like a shepherd, to dress up and to go be a shepherd.

[26:46] And this is what he says in verse 4. Thus says the Lord my God, Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. So who would the flock be here? It would be Israel. What are they?

[26:56] Doomed to slaughter. Those who buy them, slaughter them and go unpunished. And those who sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, I have become rich. And their own shepherds, which in my opinion would be like the religious leaders of the Jews, have no pity on them.

[27:15] For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, declares the Lord. Again, the cup of wrath is full against the nation of Israel here.

[27:28] I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land. Behold, I will cause each of them to fall into the hand of his neighbor, each into the hand of the king, and they shall crush the land, and I will deliver none from their hand.

[27:41] So, kind of a tough task. Hey, go be the shepherd of really bad news. In verse 7, he's obedient. It says, So I became the shepherd of the flock, doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders, and I took two staffs.

[27:54] One I named favor, and the other I named union. That word favor, some versions say like goodness, some of them say like beauty, but the idea is God's favor.

[28:06] And the other, union. It's like a bond. It's almost like you bound something with rope, a tight bond. So you have God's favor, you have God's union, as these two staffs. And I tended the sheep.

[28:18] In one month, I destroyed the three shepherds, but I became impatient with them. They detested me. So I said, I will not be your shepherd. I am not going to be your shepherd anymore.

[28:31] What is to die, let it die. What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. Verse 10, I took my staff favor, this goodness, this favor, and I broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with the peoples.

[28:45] So it was annulled on that day. And the sheep traders, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. And then here is our prophecy from Matthew, verse 12.

[28:56] I said to them, if it seems good to you, give me my wages, but if not, keep them. And they weighed out, as my wages, 30 pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, throw it to the potter, the lordly price at which I was priced by them.

[29:10] So I took the 30 pieces of silver, threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter. Then I broke my second staff, union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

[29:23] So here we have this prophecy that is referenced at Jesus' crucifixion, referenced right there on Good Friday, right before he's at Pilate at that point.

[29:35] And this prophecy of these 30 wages going to the potter is right in line with the staff of goodness, of favor, and the staff of union, a strong bond being broken with the nation of Israel.

[29:51] And again, you have a bunch of prophecy just about the destruction of Israel, and no longer having pity on the inhabitants of the land. So all of this is coming full circle at the cross.

[30:06] It's really interesting to see how that all works out, how it's all coming to the cross. The Jews are rejecting the Messiah, putting him to death, conspiring to crucify him. And here we have this prophecy about favor and union being taken away from them.

[30:22] Now let's go back to Jeremiah. This is the last one, I promise. Jeremiah 32. And here once again, we see Jeremiah dealing with a potter and with a field.

[30:43] This one is actually a happy ending for the nation of Israel. Finally some good news, right? So in Jeremiah 32, Jeremiah is in prison at this point.

[30:55] Nebuchadnezzar had locked him up. And in verse 6, it says this, Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me, Behold, Hanamel, the son of Shalom, your uncle, will come to you and say, Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.

[31:15] So he's saying, Hey, your uncle's going to come saying, Buy this field. Verse 9, he says, I bought the field at Anathoth from Hanamel, my cousin, and weighed out the money to him 17 shekels of silver.

[31:29] I signed the deed, I sealed it, I got witnesses, weighed the money on the scales. Verse 11, it says, I took the sealed deed of purchase containing the terms and conditions.

[31:45] I'm sure he didn't read them, he just checked the box on the form, and the open copy, that's like a software joke, he does some other stuff with the deed, he gives it to this guy who gave it to that guy, so on and so forth.

[31:57] Verse 14, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, take these deeds, take all the documents, all the terms and conditions, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware vessel that they may last for a long time.

[32:15] So he's buying this field, he's putting the record of the purchase into a potter's vessel, for thus says the Lord, verse 15, the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, houses and fields and vineyards shall be again bought in this land.

[32:36] Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land. And so you see again this prophecy of a potter, this prophecy of a field, you have Jeremiah, and there's this idea of this redemptive purchase that Jeremiah gets to have where there's this restoration in the land.

[32:57] Houses and fields and vineyards once again coming to Jerusalem. I'll tell you for the second time, I'm by no means a prophecy expert. A lot of this came from other commentators that I followed.

[33:14] To me, it really does lay out a good picture of the age of grace where God's attention has come away from Israel for a time until the fullness of the Gentiles has come from Romans 11.

[33:27] And then at that time, God's attention will come back to Israel and there will once again be blessings in the land. Like I said, would I die on that hill about these prophecies?

[33:38] Probably not. But it was a good study. It was fun to do. And so in closing, if the musicians want to come up, I read Romans 11 up and down a couple times while studying this.

[33:55] Trying to see what it was that the Lord would have for me to share from here. Like I said, it does a pretty good job of describing the age of grace and the hardening that comes upon Israel.

[34:06] and, you know, with all the ambiguity of the prophecies, I think the Lord wanted me to share just the crystal clear part of it from the very end of Romans chapter 11.

[34:19] This is a hill I will die on. It says this, oh the depth, verse 33, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways.

[34:34] Say, man, God is so wise. He is so knowledgeable. We don't even, like it says unscrutable His ways. I don't even know what that word means. Like I can't even read the verse talking about how good God is. For who has known the mind of the Lord?

[34:46] Who has been His counselor? Who has given Him a gift that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

[34:57] To Him be the glory forever. Amen. You know, the Word of God is composed as a whole book you know, it might not all be exactly to us but it's all for us, right?

[35:09] And it is a good book and God knows all the answers and one day we'll figure it all out but it was an interesting study and what we can say is from Him and to Him and through Him are all things to Him be the glory.

[35:20] Father God, thanks for loving us. Thank you for giving us your Word. Thank you for being obedient to the point of death on the cross. Just what a terrible death and also besides the physical Lord, the spiritual of being separated from your Father for those hours on the cross.

[35:33] for our sin, Lord. We're thankful for it. Thank you that you've given us eyes to see. Thank you for recording what you did about Judas and just the replacement of him with Matthias.

[35:47] We just pray all these things in Jesus' name.