Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Jeff:
Okay, well hey, so today we have a segment that we think is fun. We’ve done this I think one or two other times. So today it’s just called Guess the Gibberish.

Chris:
I wonder in post-edit if they could put the gibberish words on the screen for those watching just for fun.

Jeff:
Okay, well we’ll have to pass that on.

Chris:
And so we’ll know, basically, the people watching right now will know whether they heard me.

Jeff:
That’s right. So this is Guess the Gibberish. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to put up a string of random words, gibberish, see if you can figure them out. Now, I think that this is really an easy one for you because when we tried to figure out gibberish, we just went and got your last message that you preached. And that’s what I’m going to quote back to you. Wow, that was weak. Yeah, was that weak?

Chris:
You were trying.

Jeff:
I give you half a point. Okay. Half a point. They stack up, right? They build up. All right. Okay. No, this is not from the message you preached. Here we go. Police do not hutch.

Chris:
Police do not hutch. Please do not touch. Yes. Wow.

Jeff:
I heard myself say it. Wow. Okay. This one’s the toughest one. Okay. Ike hot. If rum, mime, hum, uh, I’m not going to remember all those.

Chris:
I can’t repeat that. Say it again.

Jeff:
Ike hot. If rum, mime, hum, uh, say it fast. Ike hot. If rum, mime, hum, uh, I don’t even have a clue. Ike hot. If rum, mime, hum, uh, I got it from my mama.

Chris:
That did not sound like that at all.

Jeff:
That was a hard one.

Chris:
That was terrible. I rebuke that. I do not receive that.

Jeff:
Yes. This one is a little tough. Yep. Binjo Wadshun. Bid. Yeah. Binjo Wadshun.

Chris:
Binjo what? Wadshun. Wadshun. Binjo Wadshun. Binjo Wadshun. Binjo Wadshun. Banjo watching?

Jeff:
Binge watching. The Joe is the problem. Binge watching. Yeah. That was a hard one. Okay.

Chris:
Why would they say Joe?

Jeff:
I don’t know. This one.

Chris:
Binge-o-watching. Yeah.

Jeff:
That’s yeah.

Chris:
I don’t love this game. I don’t love it.

Jeff:
It’s not great. Day-kin-wan-for-thud-heem.

Chris:
Say it again.

Jeff:
Daykin won for thud him.

Chris:
Daykin won for thud him? Daykin, Daykin won? Daykin won? Daykin won.

Jeff:
Daykin won for thud him. Don’t know. Daykin won for the team. That was a good one. Was it? Yeah. Gnome or missed her nice thigh.

Chris:
Gnome or Mr. Nice Guy? Gnome or Mr. Nice Guy?

Jeff:
Yes, there you go. Okay, that was a good one. Yeah. Okay, well, you got two out of the five, so that was a rough one. Yeah. Yeah, we should just move on. I think that was not one of our better moments.

Chris:
Let’s pretend that didn’t exist. Hey, I vote we not do those again.

Jeff:
One of the other things that our listeners will learn if they listen to us long enough is if we can’t win at a thing, we don’t want to do it again. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. It has to be to our advantage. We like to tilt the table our way. That’s what we like.

Chris:
Yeah. That’s funny. Okay. Guess the gibberish.

Jeff:
Well, today is seven more verses. And this is a kind of a sad passage. It really is. But this one, it’s about Judas and Matthew chapter 27, where Judas takes his life. In Matthew chapter 27, verse three, which is the only passage that covers this idea today. Matthew’s the only one. And it says, when Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the 30 pieces of silver back to the leading priests and the elders. I’ve sinned, he declared, for I’ve betrayed an innocent man. What do we care? They retorted. That’s your problem. Then Judas threw the silver coins down in the temple and went out to hang himself. The leading priests picked up the coins. It wouldn’t be right to put this money in the temple treasury, they said, since it was payment for murder. After some discussion, they finally decided to buy the potter’s field and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners. That is why the field is still called the field of blood. This fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah that says they took the 30 pieces of silver, the price at which he was valued by the people of Israel, and purchased the potter’s field as the Lord directed. So very sad ending to a very conflicted life there. Right? This guy who’d rejected Jesus, rejected everything that he’d seen. He, he witnessed it at the same level that the others did. And he went, eh, I don’t know how he’s doing it, but I don’t believe in it.

Chris:
Did you ever wonder like the Pharisees knew the scripture back and forth? Yes.

Jeff:
Yes.

Chris:
Did they buy the potter’s field because of the prophecy or did they just buy the potter’s field, like just not knowing the prophecy or not thinking. And then all of a sudden, uh, you know, somebody points out 30 years later when they’re on their deathbed, Hey, you do realize what you guys did is in the Bible, right?

Jeff:
I would bet that they were, that they overlooked it. So they were obsessed with the law. But, you know, there are a lot of Christians. I know, I know Christians that are obsessed with the book of Romans, but can’t tell you anything about the minor prophets. Right. Right. Cause they just don’t read the rest of it. They get obsessed about their peace. The thing that they want to harp on the most and they don’t know any of the rest of the Bible.

Chris:
And it could be that it wasn’t in the Torah.

Jeff:
That’s right. It wasn’t one of the first five books of Moses that, uh, you know, they memorize the first five books. Right. And then they were familiar with the rest and perhaps they just didn’t realize it. Yeah. Or God blinded him from it.

Chris:
Remember in Kung Fu Panda?

Jeff:
Probably.

Chris:
When Master Oogway says that Tai Lung is going to return, and then he gets so nervous he sends a messenger there, but it’s because the messenger went that actually he escaped. So he said, it’s, uh, we, we often find our destiny on the path that we choose to avoid it. That’s what, that’s what Master Ugo says. Right. And so that’s, that’s sort of like this right now. Right.

Jeff:
Self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah.

Chris:
Sort of that way. Right. So it’s like, did they do it because of the prophecy or did it, or, you know, in spite of it or whatever, but But yeah, I have a tendency to believe that maybe you’re right, like they didn’t quite realize. But it is interesting how this prophecy is so unbelievably specific. Thirty pieces of silver, which was valued by the people of Israel to purchase the potter’s field. Yet this is what they choose to do with 30 pieces of silver, right? That’s pretty strange.

Jeff:
So, you know it talks about yesterday when we were Discussing this trial at that point It was all the leading priests and it was the elders of the people and it was the teachers of religious law Those were the people so sometimes it’s possible for us to be really really really focused on one part of God’s Word and and just leave the rest of it. And it’s why we need really good balance, right? It’s why we need to understand the whole Word of God and how the Old Testament connects to the New Testament, how every book in the Bible points to Jesus, how everything about God’s Word is important, right? Jesus says this, that every part of the Word of God um, is important for us. And so I think that in this case, they missed it because they, they were teachers of the law. They knew the law first five books. They just missed out on so much more of the rest of the Bible. It was there plain for everybody to see. They just didn’t see it. And so, you know, they did exactly what, uh, what the Bible said that they would do.

Chris:
So we let’s, let’s just get this out of the way. We believe that, uh, unfortunately that Judas is not in heaven.

Jeff:
Yeah, the book of Acts says he went to his place.

Chris:
Yeah, well, and it also says that Jesus referred to him, the one headed for destruction.

Jeff:
Yeah, the son of destruction. Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah, so yeah, I have to believe that that’s true. And by the way, it wasn’t because he committed suicide that he went to hell. It was because he rejected Jesus as the Messiah. Right. Right. So, and by the way, not as it, you know, I mean, listen, trust me, I’m never going to be a person that You know justify something as awful as taking your own life or even making light of it because every life matters Yeah, yeah, because that is definitely something I would never ever do but the idea that a person would think that suicide would keep you from heaven is in my very strong belief incorrect and And the reason why is because the Bible doesn’t say anything about that, and that would actually go against every scripture we know about salvation. So the Bible says there’s nothing you can do to get you to heaven. There’s nothing you can do to keep you from heaven. Right? If you trust Christ. Right. And so that belief system of taking your own life, sending you to hell, that belief system was invented, you can Google this on your own, but it was invented because, let’s just say it this way, it was motivated out of fear. right? It involved persecution, and it involved motivating people not to take their own lives when they buckled to deny Christ. So that’s how that was invented. And it was not invented by the Bible. You know what I mean? It doesn’t come from the Bible. It was invented outside of that. And also, the only verse that people use to back up that belief is they tried to quote the verse that says there is a sin that you can commit, it’s the unpardonable sin, right? There’s a sin that you can commit that is not forgiven. And that’s a whole other sermon altogether, but it’s never listed what that sin is. And if you match it up against all the other scriptures about salvation, There’s only two scholarly beliefs about that verse. Either number one, Jesus is referring to maybe possibly a sin that could only be committed while he was there on the earth in person, that they rejected the Messiah in person, and somehow that’s a different sin than you and I rejecting him today, which I don’t believe is true. That’s not a very widely accepted view, but it is a view that’s out there. And the other view, that’s widely accepted, is rejecting the Holy Spirit, right? So you reject the Holy Spirit, you deny Christ, you don’t choose to believe Him, that’s the unpardonable sin.

Jeff:
Yeah, rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to draw you to Christ. Convict you of your sin, draw you to repentance, draw you to faith in Christ. That’s His job. So it’s when you reject Christ. So in this situation, he didn’t go to hell because of his suicide. He went to hell because of the fact that he rejected Christ. right? So he felt bad about his behavior, but that didn’t bring him to a salvation moment in placing his faith in Jesus Christ, right? So it’s possible to have a little bit of guilt about what you’ve done, but if you don’t place your faith in Jesus Christ, then you’re not safe. Now Acts 1.18, so sometimes there’s a little bit of a Again, you know, sometimes people like to try to say, oh, there’s differences in the Bible and that disproves them. I think it’s the opposite. I think that the difference is as long as they’re reconcilable, the differences prove the Bible because it’s different views of the same situation. That’s right. If you and I saw the same thing, same event happened, we would describe it similarly, but we would probably see different things because we’re standing at different angles or whatever. We had other information available. So in Acts 118, it says that Judas, after he had betrayed Jesus, and it says in verse 17, Judas is one of us and shared in the ministry with us. But then it said that they bought a field with the money he received from his treasury and then falling headfirst there, his body split open, spilling out his intestines.

Chris:
Ew. Yeah, no doubt.

Jeff:
Yeah. So it’s, it’s, it’s worse. So because of that, then the news of his death spread to all the people of Jerusalem and they gave the place, the Aramaic name, Akildama, which means feel the blood is where that came from. So the, um, uh, the reconciliation of those two things would be, he hung himself as it says here, And perhaps the branch broke or something, right? If he hung himself out over the edge of a cliff, um, he, the branch breaks, he falls. Right. And so historically that’s what theologians would say is that both events happen. The hanging first, the splitting open second, which is really, really gross. Well, I mean… And so those of you listening to this this morning, good morning.

Chris:
Yeah, good morning, right. Well, it’s not a stretch. It’s not a stretch to, you know, think about all the stories in the Old Testament, right? Remember when Joseph was in the dungeon and he was giving the prophecy to the butcher and the baker, remember? Right. And he says to the, or the cup holder, what was it? It was the cup holder and the baker, right? And no, no, no. Yes, it was the cupbearer. It was a cupbearer and a baker, wasn’t it? Anyway, it wasn’t a butcher. But he said to the baker, yeah, the birds are going to come and they’re going to eat of your flesh. And remember, it was just so gruesome. Right? And it’s like, you know, remember Elisha calls two bears from the woods to maul 40 kids for making fun of him because he’s a prophet of God. I mean, there’s some pretty Rough things. Rough things that happen to people, you know, and I just don’t see how this is any different. Somebody who betrays Christ for his body, for something horrific to happen to the body afterwards, I would expect that actually.

Jeff:
I really would. Well, and the graphicness of it, you don’t find the Bible being super graphic all the time, but there are a few times when it is. And I think that’s just another one of those evidences of the specificity of that specific event is very significant. So the other one would be, I think it’s interesting that these priests have no guilt. Yeah. What do we care? Right. So he comes in and he says, you know what? I didn’t mean to get him killed. I meant to get him arrested. I was trying to ruin his reputation. I think is probably what it was is I’ve decided Jesus is a scam. And he’s not the one I thought he was going to be. Very likely Judas was one of those zealots, right? Because Jesus had a couple of zealots. There was some kind of motivation that Judas had for following Jesus that was not fulfilled, whatever that was. And so all Judas saw Jesus as is some kind of do-gooder. He goes around somehow he’s doing these really amazing things and people believe and he says all these things that most of it I don’t even understand and he teaches nice things and the people sure do like him but I’m done. I’m just, I’m done. I’m going to ruin his reputation. I’m going to get him canceled. Well, I think his intent was getting canceled, not killed.

Chris:
Yeah. Well, I mean, and he also could have thought, Hey, the money’s not going to come rolling in like it used to because he’s seeing things turn, the tides turning. So I have one more opportunity to cash out on this guy because I mean, you know, the Bible gives us insight about Judas and it says, remember when the woman broke the alabaster box and he said that woman, that, that money could have been sold or that perfume could have been sold in the money given to the poor. And then it says in parentheses, But he didn’t care about it. That’s not why he said it.

Jeff:
Right.

Chris:
He didn’t care about the poor. Right. Because he often stole money out of Jesus’s treasury for himself. Right. And so it gives us, you know, some insight about the fact that even during ministry, his motivation is making the money. So, you know, it’s probably fair to assume that he viewed Jesus like a cash cow. Right like hey, I’m just gonna make a little on the side This is kind of cool, and and we’ve got the best trick in the book and right you remember the old Sorry about the movie quotes today, but you remember the old show from the 70s Pete’s Dragon. Yes remember that we’re Money money money by the pound right they were they were shysters right from town to town right he says You he says something about you. I didn’t want to go bald, but now my hair turned pink and And the song he says, but it’s so becoming. So anyway.

Jeff:
Yeah. So, so these guys lose, uh, the, the, the Pharisees lose any sense of morality, except they won’t take the money back and put it back in the treasury. Cause that’s inappropriate. Right. Right. It’s inappropriate. So selling it because it was against the law, the Jewish law to use money, except money for murder. Hmm. Apparently it’s not against the law to murder somebody in their minds, but it is against the law to accept money for murder. So they knew that they gave it to him for murder. That’s what they gave it to. They were selling him out. Now they’ve decided they’re going to convict him, convict Jesus. And so Judas wants to give the money back, go, Hey, wait a minute. You know, he’s a jerk, but he’s not a, an evil person. I don’t want him killed. They say, well, what does that tell us? We don’t care. And then he throws the money at them. And then they’re standing there, they’re picking up the coins, 30 pieces, which by the way, 30 pieces of silver was the price of a slave. That’s right. So it’s not a significant amount of money. It’s the price of a slave. And so they pick it up and then they go, well, you know, They’re so pious in this moment, it would be inappropriate for us to put this in the treasury. Right? Right. Isn’t it so goofy? And isn’t it weird how, uh, even everyone’s not to make a movie theme, uh, uh, reference in the mafia type movies, there’s still a code. There’s a family code, you know what I mean? These criminals, they do all these bad things, but don’t lie to the family or whatever, right? And it’s kind of the same thing here that they’ve developed their own sense of morality, their own sense of right and wrong. They’re claiming it’s the Bible, or God’s words, or the teaching of all of the teachers about God’s words. And I think that this is where the danger would be. And this is why we want our listeners to spend time in the word themselves and not just believe us. right, is because much of the Pharisees and the teacher’s religious laws belief system was not built on what God’s words said. It was built on the words taught to them about God’s word. And so the most important thing for you to do is to take God’s Word into your heart and mind on your own. Having some teachers is good, right? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, the Book of Romans says. So hearing God’s Word being taught helps build our faith. But ultimately, you can only truly know what is true with your time in the Word, the teaching of the Holy Spirit, those two things first, and then having Bible teachers be a supplement to those things. Otherwise, I think we run the risk of the Pharisees, and that is we build in the teachers of the law, where we build these religious constructs that don’t make any sense. It’s okay to murder, it’s just wrong to put the murder money back into the church treasury, or the temple treasury, right? They build these weird religious constructs that make sense to them. but are not, you know, they’re contrary to scripture. The bigger one, I don’t know if you heard, but in the top 10, God’s top 10 is don’t kill. Yeah. I heard about that. Right. Do you hear about that one? Yeah. So I’m not sure what they’re quoting about putting money back in the treasury, but it’s not in the top 10. Yeah. Right. And so it’s, it’s just one of those things to spend time in God’s word, know it yourself, let the Holy spirit teach you, and then supplement that with people like us that are helping teach what the Bible has to say.

Chris:
Yeah. That’s great.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Chris:
That’s awesome. Well, that looks like about our time. And I just have to throw this in there too. You mentioned the godfather and he’s, you know, in the mafia, you know, and it’s always family first. Yes. Godfather too. And he says, I know it was you, Fredo. Remember that? Yes. Yeah. The brother. There you go. You don’t betray family and the godfather.

Jeff:
That’s right.

Chris:
All right. Well, hey, that looks like it’s our time and we will see you next time, hopefully on The Bible Guys.