Clough Acts Lesson 3

There Had to be a Traitor – Acts 1:12-26

…a historic event. Why? Our doctrine of revelation is coming under increasing attack today and because it is we have to take our more hardnosed attitude in this area of what revelation is and what it is not. You may think this is a nice subject for Dallas Seminary or something, the seminary boys, but not one that vitally concerns you. Well, this week I got a letter written by Dr. Gary Lightner, Executive Director of the National Association of Biology Teachers. Dr. Lightner wrote this letter to a student who was in a class taught by a biology teacher on LBC tapes. And the biology teacher had assigned the children in the high school biology class to a debate, half the class for evolution, half the class for creation. This particular student was the captain of the evolution side and he wrote the National Association of Biology Teachers for any material that he could use in this debate, taking the position for evolution for the sake of discussion.

Dr. Lightner wrote this back to the student, (quote). This is excerpts from his letter. “To learn that you are involved in a debate between the scientific theory of evolution and the story of Biblical creationism would be amusing if it were not tragic. It is a tragedy that some intelligent individual has suggested such a debate because of his sheer folly to formalize a debate between subjects derived from different basis. Scientific theory develops from and tends to be confirmed by observations, experiments, data sources, hypothesis, analyses; religious beliefs must be accepted solely by faith.” (end of quote) Now what Dr. Lightner has done is what most intelligentsia are doing today, and that is dividing religion and science. Religion is effectively divorced from not only science but also history, also politics. We love Jesus on the left and we do according to man’s law on the right. That’s the modern dichotomy; it’s a split and it’s an accusation against us, and Christians can’t fight this battle unless they understand the Biblical doctrine of revelation. So we’re going to take a few minutes to make you appreciate why Luke begins Acts the way he does to head of the Dr. Lightner’s and the other members of the intelligentsia who insist that revelation has nothing to do in the area of science.

I wrote this back to Dr. Lightner in the course of a letter and I quote from part of it. “Do you mean to imply the following statement or am I misreading your position. One, that scientific theory rests upon no metaphysical presuppositions beyond empirical verification or falsification? That is, that you can erect scientific theories without regard whatsoever to any presupposition about the nature of the universe,” which is of course false. “Two, are you implying that there is no religion on the face of this earth that makes claims about conditions within space/time history that can be verified or falsified.” And obviously we have Christian faith that is making a very distinct claim in the area of history that can be checked, so I’ll be interested to see if Dr. Lightner replies.

The point is that the doctrine of revelation from Scripture, the doctrine of revelation as we use the word “revelation” means many things? It means first of all that when God speaks He speaks words; He does not speak with just pictures. He does not speak with an umph or an ugh or an oomph, He speaks words. This is important for those of you who are going to Lubbock and enrolling in the new course there of transcendental meditation.

A second feature of the doctrine of revelation is that revelation is personal and therefore appeals to your conscience and you must decided; you cannot be neutral, one or the other, accept it or reject it. Revelation is also historical and it involves facts within space/time history. Revelation is comprehensive and that means when God chooses to speak in the area of creation and in the course of so speaking He mentions how man was created, He mentions the sequence of man’s civilization, He mentions the order in which things were made, then He is right and His words must be taken at the first step in the formulation of any theory. And finally, revelation is prophetic; it speaks of the future which lies beyond man’s finite understanding.

Now let’s look at Acts 1:12. It says after the ascension, after Christ rose from the dead, after He ascended to heaven that day, “They returned unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day’s journey.” How did they get a Sabbath day’s journey? How did they determine this? They determined it from two verses in the Old Testament: Exodus 16:29 and Numbers 35:5. The idea was, briefly, this: in the Exodus passage it said you shouldn’t go out of your place of living on the Sabbath day; you couldn’t take a long walk outside of the place where you lived. Numbers 35:5 gave the dimensions of a Levitical place to live. Conclusion: you couldn’t go beyond two thousand cubits and that’s how the Pharisees got the law of a Sabbath Day’s journey.

Jesus had led the disciples up on the ridge of land of the Mount of Olives. As they walked back from that ridge line certain things happened; they went to the upper room. [shows slides] Here is the line of the ridge from the Mount of Olives looked at from the east side. On the other side of the ridge line is the city of Jerusalem. So it was here where the disciples are at the start of verse 12. They walked across here and that is a Sabbath day’s journey, from the right side of this slide to the left side of this slide. As they walked further toward the city of Jerusalem, and this is a model of the city of Jerusalem as it existed in Jesus day. This is the city of David, there is the pool of Siloam. As the disciples walked through this area they didn’t stop, this is the area of the synagogue and the craft area. They didn’t stop at the second area, an industrial area and as you can see, small houses that didn’t have upper rooms. Rather they kept walking, they moved over here. This is the more ritzy section of the city of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day and many of these houses had upper rooms, rooms fully capable of handling 120 men. So this is the upper room described in verse 13.

Acts 1:13, it says, “And when they entered into the city they went up into an upper room,” now in the original languages it doesn’t say they went to “an” upper room, it says they went to “the upper room.” Now if I were to tell you, did you go to “the upper room” you obviously would think of some particular upper room among many different upper rooms. Now what would be “the upper room.” “The upper room” would obviously be none other than the upper room in which the first communion was held, the upper room in which Jesus Christ authorized that modification of the Passover that we celebrate once a month, the upper room in which He gave His last instructions before He was crucified, “the upper room.” We don’t know who owned the upper room but there’s a hint in Acts 12:12 that the lady who owned it was none other than the mother of the writer of the second Gospel, John Mark. His mother’s name was Mary, there are a lot of Marys, it must have been the popular name in that day, there are four or five Marys in the New Testament, and this is another Mary, not the mother of Jesus, or Mary Magdalene, but this is Mary, the mother of Mark, and she was a very wealthy woman, apparently, and owned a house big enough to have one of these big upper rooms. And it was is that upper room that the disciples met together.

You notice in verse 13 they have a list of the apostles, “Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Jude, the brother of James.” This chapter is going to be about the apostles, Luke is interested in the apostles. Over and over again Luke stresses the apostles. Why does he stress the apostles? He stresses the apostles because this is the apostolic church that will be grounded upon the teachings of the apostles in the New Testament; it’s very important that we have the foundation poured correctly. So who are the apostles listed.

Peter and James, and John,” those are the three leading apostles; they’re the ones who appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, they’re always the ones listed first. Peter was the mouth, John was the brains, and I don’t know what James was, he probably was the legs, but that’s roughly their role. John was brilliant but he was a quiet man. Peter wasn’t so smart but he had a good mouth and a good spokesman and so he became the Church’s first PR man. Those were the three leaders, but something more interesting about one being the mouth and one being the foot and one being the brain. The more interesting thing about all these men is what they did the rest of their life and we learn this from church history. Church history tells us that these men went all throughout the world preaching the gospel. They didn’t stay in Jerusalem. Now we have to be careful here because we’re going to come across another little problem at the end; what about Paul and was he one of the twelve and we’ll show why he was not one of the twelve.

We have to understand from the very beginning Luke’s purpose in Acts. Remember I said it was transition and the minor theme of Acts was to show that Christianity was not subversive vis a vis the Roman government. Therefore, Luke concentrates on those men who have particular importance to the Roman authorities and the man who had particular importance as far as the Romans were concerned was Paul, not these men. So these men are not related in the acts of the apostles and you tend to think that they did nothing, they just sat around and did nothing. Here’s what church history tells us about these men.

Peter had a great ministry in Babylon, Persia, he also went to Rome. John the Apostle went into Asia Minor, the country which is now called Turkey, died on the island of Patmos, but before he died he was a great pastor and taught many, many years in a city called Ephesus. Thomas, what did he do? He went northeast to Parthia, Persia, and founded the first Christian church in India, years before modern missions. Bartholomew went into Armenia and ministered there. Matthew, the writer of the first Gospel, went down to Ethiopia and ministered to the black race there. Simon the Zealot was a member of the leading right-wing ultra conservative party and he’s always called Simon the Zealot because the authors of Scripture want to point out the effect the Word of God had on both Matthew and Simon.

If it were not for God’s Word Matthew and Simon would have been mortal enemies. Matthew was a Jew that kowtowed to the Roman establishment. He wormed his way up through the Roman bureaucracy into the internal revenue service; that was Matthew, he was sympathetic with the establishment. Simon the Zealot, who were the Zealots? The Zealots were those who were trying to bring down the establishment by armed revolution. The Zealots were the ones who began the revolt against Rome in 66 AD that led finally to the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus in 70 AD. So you have two men coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, Matthew and Simon, and what is their common bond, because both have modified their views in the light of the authoritative Word of God. And it is God’s Word that gives them unity. I only cite this because it’s common in Christian circles today to give up having fellowship with people of tremendously opposite areas of the social spectrum, opposite areas of the educational spectrum and so on. And yet here we have in the apostle ranks themselves men who, if left to their own views apart from God’s Word, would have torn the movement in pieces; the bickering between the establishmentarians of Matthew and the anti-establishmentarians of Simon the Zealot.

And then we have Jude, and he went to Assyria and Persia and ministered there. So these men spread abroad upon the face of the earth. Paul is emphasized in Acts because of the theme of Acts but because Paul is emphasized don’t forget these men and this great list of honored believers in verse 13.

In Acts 1:14 it says, “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women,” I always like to point to that verse because from time to time there get to be some guys that get this leadership business to the conclusion that the girls can’t even pray because it says in the Bible women ought to keep silent in the local church. Well now isn’t it a strange thing that these women were not keeping silent in the first church. Isn’t it a strange thing that these women were joining with the apostles in prayer. These aren’t even just common men, these are the apostles; the generals of the faith permitted women to pray with them, they didn’t even have segregated prayer meetings. And so these men ministered with the women, “and Mary, the mother of Jesus,” by the way, this is the last time that Mary appears in God’s Word; her name is never mentioned again, whether she died shortly after this we don’t know, but Mary’s last scene is with the early apostles. And she’s seen here with her other children, for it says at the end of verse 14, “and with His brethren.”

Now there’s a long, long, centuries long dispute between Protestants and Catholics over who these “brethren” are. The Catholics hold to the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary, that Mary was always a virgin and she never had any more children. And Protestants hold that Mary had many children, she was a virgin only at the point of the concept of Jesus, and after that Mary was no virgin, she had many children. In fact three of Jesus’ half-brothers are named in Scripture; Simon, James and Jude. Jude wrote the book of Jude and James wrote the book of James. So we have two of Jesus’ own half-brothers writing books in the New Testament. And the interesting thing is if you check the vocabulary of Jude and check the vocabulary of James and check the vocabulary of Jesus and the vocabulary of Mary when she worshipped God in that famous Magnificat passage, they all talk with the same kind of idiom. In other words, it was peculiar to that family to talk about nature in a certain way and you’ll find Jude, James, Jesus and Mary all use illustrations from nature and they talk in basically the same concepts.

There’s a great deal of evidence that these brethren in verse 14 are none other than Jesus’ real brothers; the same brothers who were unbelievers in John 7. Well, if they were unbelievers in John 7 how come they’re believers here, they obviously are; when was the conversion. We don’t know exactly but 1 Corinthians 15:7 reports the fact that after Jesus rose from the dead one day He appeared to His half-brother James; James saw His deceased brother, he believed and it may have been that James went back and led his brothers and sisters to Christ. But it’s heartening to remember for some of us who are struggling with our own families that these people in Jesus’ own family did not believe until after He died.

Acts 1:15, “And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, (the number of names together was about an hundred and twenty),” Peter naturally gravitates to the position of spokesman. And Luke notes here that there were one hundred and twenty disciples. Why do you suppose that little note is in there? A very important reason. In fact, that little note is going to be a key to handling the next chapter; the little note that says there were only 120 believers in that upper room. Now no matter how you interpret Acts 2 with Pentecost, with the tongues, the only thing you can say is that only 120 people spoke in tongues. Now since 1 Corinthians 15 says there were at least 500 brethren in one place, probably in Galilee, and there were thousands of believers all over the place who never spoke in tongues; did not speak in tongues on the day of Pentecost, never spoke in tongues the rest of their life. It obviously shows that speaking in tongues was not universal. In fact, there’s even evidence to suspect that in chapter 2 only the apostles spoke in tongues; there were only twelve men who spoke in tongues, not 120. There’s an argument about that. So don’t think when you come to the book of Acts in chapter 2, when you see the Holy Spirit coming like tongues of fire it came upon every believer. It did not. The Holy Spirit came only on those in the upper room. That’s why Jesus wanted them to stay there; they wanted to be a remembrance to the nation Israel. So that little note of 120 is very, very important; contrast that note someday with 1 Corinthians 15 where 500 are mentioned.

Acts 1:16, Peter’s speech. Remember I said that one-third of the book of Acts is speech. Luke was a great speech writer; he summarized the speeches of the early teachers of the Christian church. We have a lot of the earliest preaching of the Word of God in the book of Acts. Notice always the content of the preaching in the book of Acts, the kind of preaching that is solidly exegetical, verse by verse, that’s the kind of preaching you find in Acts. And so he begins, “Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled.” Right here Peter uses a strong Greek verb, dei, it is logically necessary, it’s a very, very strong word for cause. What Peter is saying is there had to be a Judas, there had to be a sin to betray Jesus, it was God’s plan that a man sin to betray His Son. That’s how strong this verse is, very strong verse. “It was logically necessary that there be a traitor, it was absolutely necessary to God’s sovereign plan that Jesus, His Son, be turned in as a crook. That was necessary.

But Peter and Luke reporting Peter is very careful to avoid fatalism. In the ancient world the key force, particularly among the Greeks, was fate. If you read the mythologies you’ll understand how the Greeks always had fate in back of their gods; here’s the pantheon on the top of Mount Olympus with all the gods and goddesses and the most powerful god on Mount Olympus was Zeus, yet even Zeus had to turn around and look at the tablets of destiny, fate. Even the most powerful Greek god, in turn, was ruled by something more powerful than himself, fate. And the Greeks were great believers in fate. But here in this passage of Scripture the fate is not in back of God, the fate is God; it’s God’s sovereignty that is necessary. God is not in turn controlled by something in back of Him but He is the One who controls all things.

And having made this identity, Peter and Luke both are very careful to protect human responsibility because in verses 22 and 22, right after he quotes those same verses he says, “Whereof, these men who have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, [22] Beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that He was taken up from us, must one be ordained [to be a witness with us of His resurrection]” and the “must” here is the same verb, dei. So he uses dei with reference to history, there had to be a Judas, there had to be somebody who would act the role of a traitor. That’s what Jesus said, “it must be that one of you betray Me, but woe to the man who does it.” Now here, having said that and having heavily dogmatically stated God’s sovereign will Peter is very quick to say yes and God’s sovereign plan also includes that there be another person to replace Judas and that other person to replace Judas must now be chosen, and therefore human responsibility; it is also necessary. God’s sovereignty in Scripture includes human choices. God’s sovereignty is not independent of what you do; you can’t sit and say what will happen will happen; bologna! That is fate, that’s paganism, that’s not Biblical sovereignty. Biblical sovereignty, this must happen and I must do it; that’s Biblical sovereignty.

Let’s look at how Peter develops his speech. He says this Scripture had to be fulfilled, “which the Holy Spirit by the mouth of David, spoke,” this proves what liberals hate and that is that the doctrine of the inerrant inspiration of Scripture antedated the fighting fundy by some centuries because the doctrine of inspiration is taught here in Acts 1 long before the old bad, bad fundy of the 1900s started teaching the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture. See, the doctrine is inspiration is something that goes way back; it was believed by Augustine, it was believed by Luther, it was believed by Calvin, it was believed by John Wesley, every major denomination used to believe in the doctrine of inerrant inspiration. Today they’re all racing to deny it. The Holy Spirit spoke “by the mouth of David,” notice he is arguing then that when David took his pen or whatever he used to scratch out the Hebrew words in the Psalms it wasn’t just David singing; it was the Holy Spirit through David working. The ultimate author of Scripture is not David or Paul or Peter or John; the ultimate author of all Scripture is the Holy Spirit. And therefore your attitude toward God is your attitude toward Scripture. Your attitude toward doctrine is your attitude toward Jesus.

So he says that this Scripture must be fulfilled because it’s inerrant and if the Scripture isn’t fulfilled it’s errant; notice Peter’s conclusion. He argues that because there is something in God’s Word, therefore that something in God’s Word must come to pass. Why? Because Peter implicitly holds to an inerrant authoritative Scripture. You see, Peter was a fundy. So He spoke, the Holy Spirit did, “by the mouth of David, before concerning Judas, who became guide to them that took Jesus. [17] For he was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry.” Now how do we know that Peter was right, because he’s going to quote, verse 20, he’s going to quote those psalms. How do we know that he’s interpreting those psalms correctly? Why can’t we object to Peter like so many people object and they say why, that’s just Charlie Clough’s interpretation or when you’re out witnessing, that’s just your interpretation.

Now a person who makes that remark is a person who either hasn’t thought, is quite stupid, or is a deceiver because you can apply that tenant to any piece of communication. If you wanted to deny something, suppose you had the President of the United States walk into a room and we have five reporters, 3 from the TV and 2 from AP and UPI. So the President says something, maybe 3 or 4 sentences; we ask the man from CBS what did he say? Well, this is my interpretation, the President really meant to say was boom, boom, boom. And we go to the reporter ABC and he says what the President said was, and this is my interpretation, blah, blah, blah. So all communication would break down if we continually said it was somebody’s interpretation. Now obviously it’s somebody’s interpretation but what we’re saying is that the interpretation is controlled. You aren’t free to interpret this any way you want to. You’re free to interpret it only within a law structure and there’s a word for this. Don’t use it around the people that makes remark, it would stretch their brain: hermeneutics, it’s a rule for interpreting Scripture, a hermeneutic, or principle of interpretation. And we are limited by what we can get from the text by our hermeneutic.

The question is, where did the apostles get their hermeneutics? Luke tells us; turn to Luke 24:44. Who taught the apostles in the early church this hermeneutic, this rule of interpreting the Old Testament. How could they go to these psalms and say that dogmatically refers to Messiah, when many of the unbelieving Jews said that does not refer to the Messiah, it refers to Israel or it refers to something else. In Luke 24:44 Jesus said, “These are the words which I spoke unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me. [45] Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. [46] And He said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.” Who opened their understanding in verse 45? Don’t think of the opening of the understanding of verse 45 as some suggestive thing that occurred halfway between the chin and the naval. That’s not a suggestive experience in the heart. The ultimate of the understanding is He gave them the system of interpreting the Holy Spirit. So who gave the Church and the apostles the correct interpretation of the Old Testament? The Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Who’s hermeneutic do we use? Christ’s hermeneutics. All right, let’s go back to Acts as Peter applies Jesus’ hermeneutics to these psalms.

He gets up before the assembly of believers and he says this applies to Judas. Why? Because Judas “was numbered with us, and he obtained part of this ministry.” And the theme in this particular chapter about Judas is a mixed theme of amazement and shock; amazement as we’ll see in a few more verses, amazement over how God dealt with Judas finally but shock over the fact that Judas was one of the apostles… one of the apostles, he ate with us. Psalm 41, “He who ate bread with me has kicked up his heel against me.” Judas was in the inner circle, he wasn’t just one of the crowd, one of the hangers-on. Judas was the guy who kept all the records for the outfit when it first started. He was the first church treasurer. Judas was the man who was always there when Jesus was teaching. Judas was the one who man have cast out demons in Christ’s name, to whom Jesus refers to in the Sermon on the Mount; many will say in that day you cast out demons in My name and I’m going to tell you that I never knew you. Judas may have done many miracles, he preached the Word, and so the amazement of the apostles is look, he was part of us and he defected; he was in the inner circle and he defected. And you’ll see that theme over and over, how could one who was one of the apostles possibly defect like Judas did. They cannot get over this. But it’s a warning for the rest of the Church. It is possible for a minister, for a deacon, for an elder, for a church member to be involved in the Word of God for years and be a Judas. The model is here; it is possible for them to defect and have shown signs that though then they were in the innermost circle they never had been born again; it’s a signal and a wisdom, and Luke records this event with amazement because it’s not just Judas. He “obtained part of this ministry.”

And then in Acts 1:18-19 Luke interrupts the speech. Verses 18-19 is an editorial remark, we know Luke, not Peter is saying this because in 19 he talks about the fact that it was in their tongue…their tongue. Now Peter wouldn’t say to you…he’d say your tongue, he wouldn’t say their tongue. So we know 18-19 are an editorial explanation of the speech, a condensation explanation. When you look at the content of 18-19 it amazes you. “Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. [19] And it was known unto all who dwells in Jerusalem, insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Akeldama, that is to say, The field of blood.” You say what is this doing in a nice loving Christian speech? Well it’s doing exactly what I said to you several months back when I read the story of the death of Arius.

Arius was a man who early in the church history denied the doctrine of the Trinity. He said Jesus was a mere man on whom came the Spirit. Arianism has always been with the Church; every heresy that has ever existed is based on Arianism. All the modern day cults are based on Arianism; Arius was a bishop and one day in his older days he was coming to be installed. The Roman Empire and the Roman Caesars loved Arian because if you have a weak Christ you can have a strong Caesar. Arianism always promotes totalitarian government. It was Arianism in Russia that led to the Czar and to communist overthrow; the Russian Orthodox Church had become weak theologically. And so wherever Arianism goes it endangers the Christian faith because it demeans God’s character. And so as this bishop, Arius, was marching in his proud procession to take over the Bishop of Alexandria under the command of the Caesar he stopped in a public latrine and fell in and died. And the Christians all over the early empire rejoiced that Arius fell into a latrine, there’s your teacher, there’s your heresy, it got flushed down the latrine where it belongs. And this was a slogan; the Christians rejoiced…rejoiced in the death of Arius. This sounds strange to this nice gooey sentimental Christian love that we experience today. You wouldn’t be caught… why, could you be filling of the Holy Spirit with and rejoice at Arius, poor man, dropped in a latrine? Sure you can. Rejoice unto God for the death of the heretic. And this was one of the great rejoicings and praisings of God in the history of the Church. God, thank you for how you dealt with these heretics. Flush them down the latrines; may they all go there, that was the point.

Now it’s a fascination with the death of heretics that led to praise of God’s character, praise because God was vindicating His character against these blasphemers. It was a particular fascination with the way they died and in verses 18-19 you have a manifestation of the same thing. Way, way back when the Church first began they began with the same, almost morbid curiosity as to how do the arch heretics die? By what manner of death? Critics will tell you that there’s a conflict between verses 18 and 19 and Matthew 27. They will tell you that there were two traditions of how Judas died. One tradition, Matthew, reports that Judas got his money from betraying Christ, by the way, on the mountain that I showed you the picture of, where the U.N. now has its headquarters, Judas betrayed Jesus there and he got the thirty shekels and he walked into the priest and he suddenly realized what had happened and he took those thirty shekels and he flung them down on the floor, right there in the temple, to the priest, and the priest picked up the shekels from off the floor and because the Law said that they couldn’t keep them in the treasury they went out and they bought a field with it. And because the field was ultimately bought with the shekels that Judas threw at the priest, it was called “The field of blood.” Then it says Judas went out an he hung himself, committed suicide. That’s all Matthew tells us. And they say see, there’s one tradition, the field is called “The field of blood” because it was purchased with the money of betrayal and it wasn’t purchased by Judas, it was purchased by the priest, and Matthew does say that.

But then here in Acts 1:18-19 we have an apparently different story. Here we have the field not purchased at all by the priest but purchased by Judas, and there’s no mention here of his hanging, there’s only mention of him splitting in the middle and his guts fall out. Why? Is there a conflict between the two? Not at all; one of the great scholars of the Christian faith in the 19^th century was Alfred Edersheim, a Hebrew Christian and he wrote a book which is considered to be master work on the life of Christ, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. And he’s describing this incident after having researched the rabbinic law of the time, Dr. Edersheim, he came from Oxford, said this: “In the Temple the priests knew not what to do with these thirty pieces of money. Their unscrupulous scrupulosity came again upon them. It was not lawful to take into the Temple-treasury for the purchase of sacred things, money that had been unlawfully gained. In such cases the Jewish Law provide that the money was to be restored to the donor, and, if he insisted on giving it,” and wouldn’t take it back, “that he should be induced to spend it for something for the public welfare. This explains the apparent discrepancy between the accounts in” Matthew and Acts. “By a fiction of law the money was still considered to be Judas’, and to have been applied by him in the purchase of the well-known potter’s field, for the charitable purpose of burying in it strangers.” [Tape turns]

How God, and this is again the praise of His character, how He showed the Christians what happened here, this is what happens to people who defy My name. First Judas gets his money; this is the scenario. He gets his money for the betrayal of Christ. His conscience begins to eat away, he can’t stand the money because he knows what he’s done for the money. He comes back to the priests and he flings it back at them, hoping to become a little bit less guilty by getting rid of that money. But woe to Judas, he can’t get rid of the money. Legally he can throw it at the priests but legally it’s binding upon Judas. The priest can take that money and go buy a field with it but legally Judas has bought the field. And what kind of a field is it that Judas buys with his money through the priest that he doesn’t want to buy? It’s a field that is a burial ground but not just a burial ground, but a burial ground of a very peculiar sort, a burial ground that was used for the indigent, for the poor, and usually in that society in that day for the off scouring of society. And so where does Judas Iscariot, the heretic and the apostate lie? Where do his remains go? Along with the rest of the dredges of society in a public graveyard, created just for the purposes… purchased independently of his own volition, the man was trapped to buy a grave yard for the indigent.

What else do we notice about this whole thing. How does it all tie together? He went out and he truly did hang himself and I’m going to show you the place where he did it, it’s still there, a little changed since the day he did it but we visited the place. Judas went there and he took the cord, apparently, from around his garment and he hung himself off a tree off the edge of this cliff and the cord from his garment wasn’t strong enough, it snapped and his body fell down on the rocks below and this is why in Acts 1:18, this is the point the narrative picks it up. Matthew 27 reports his hanging but it says he fell “headlong.” Now if you look up the word “headlong” it was used in medical texts to refer, in opposition to another word, the way you lay a patient down on a table. There’s one Greek word that means that the patient is lying on his back with his eyes up, you’d use that word. If you laid a patient on his stomach, eyes down, you’d use this word and there’s a contrast that Luke knows, he says look at the difference, when Judas died he died with his eyes looking down, and when Stephen, the first martyr died he dies with his eyes looking up; watch how men die, it tells you how they believed.

So Luke reports Peter saying here that Judas died with his eyes looking at hell, looking down. And so he fell, he fell in a position as he came tumbling down the side of the cliff, his face buried in the sand and apparently as his body catapulted down this cliff it split in half and his bowels came out. The Greek word has a lovely vocabulary called splagchnon, easy vocabulary word to remember. All his splagchnon came out of his middle. You see the gross bloody details of his death. The reason that’s in God’s Word is because it shows God is a just God; this is what happens to those who demean His name and betray His Son; not just in hell in the future but right here in this life this is what happens.

And so [19] “all the dwellers at Jerusalem” knew it, and thus the “field is called the field is called …The field of blood.” But doesn’t Matthew say The Field of Blood was called The Field of Blood because it was purchased with the blood money. But here it says it’s The Field of Blood because it’s Judas’ blood. Put the two together and you’ve got the gospel. There are two lives sacrificed in this field, the blood of Christ and the blood of Judas, and isn’t that the choice of the gospel? Either Christ dies for your sins or you die for your sins. Either Judas accepts the blood of Christ or he spills his own blood; either way the field is the field of blood. I want to show you The Field of Blood and this will give you a little better understanding of what happens to your body and why you could still hang yourself here and still do what Acts 1 says.

Keep in mind as we look at this that the valleys around Jerusalem are filled up many hundreds of feet with debris since this time, through the many conquests and so on. This is the west side of the city; the Mount of Olives is over on the other side. Here you have a long valley; that’s the valley of Gehenna, the picture of hell. It’s a picture of hell because they used to throw their garbage out there and burn it. It’s a picture of hell because in the Old Testament they threw their babies out there and burned them in idolatrous offers to the gods, Moloch and others. And so that valley has always had a bad connotation, and eve to this day, as precious as real estate is in the city of Jerusalem, when you go look in that valley you’ll find they have done very little with it. Here is a map; the valley of Gehenna starts here, goes through here, comes on over and joins the valley of Kidron. The Field of Blood is located right here, right where the garbage would sweep by. [He shows more slides.] Apparently the scene that we’re to get from Matthew 27 and Acts 1 is that Judas was somewhere along the top of this hill, suspended on a tree, the thing snapped, his body rolled down and got smashed and hung up on one of these rocks.

There’s one further piece of irony about this potter’s field; it was known as The Field of Blood, it properly had that title, but it didn’t always have that title; it used to be called The Field of the Potter. Luke presupposes you know what that means but we don’t know what that means so to find out what that means turn to Jeremiah 19:1. It was precisely this spot of land on which Jeremiah stood and did something; did something very significant in the history of the nation, in the history of the city. By the way, it’s the same piece of property named from the same potter whose vessels Paul speaks of in Romans 9, the vessel of wrath and the vessel of glory. “Thus saith the LORD, go and get a potter’s earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests, [2] And go forth into the valley of the son of Hinnom,” which is Gehenna, “which is by the entry of the east gate,” should be literally the west gate, “and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee. [3] And say, Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem:” now here’s the pronouncement the prophet Jeremiah made from exactly the same real estate centuries before this happened, “O kings of Judah, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, concerning which whosoever hears, his ears shall tingle. [4] Because they have forsaken Me, and have desecrated this place, and have burned incense in it to other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents,” that’s the blood of the babies they used to throw down in the valley and cook to the glory of the god Moloch, [5] “They have built also the high places to Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I did not command, and I did not speak it, neither came it into My mind. [6] Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that his place shall not more be called Topheth, nor The valley of the Son of Hinnom, but The Valley of Slaughter.” Who wound up in the valley of slaughter? The traitor, Judas Iscariot. The field of the potter became The Field of Blood.

Turn back to Acts 1 and see the rest of Peter’s speech. Peculiar deaths like Judas’, Arius’, in our own day Bishop Pike, are the marks of God’s wrath upon heretics. They die in a just way; they denied the faith and they’re denied comfort in death. Poor Judas, he didn’t want to buy a graveyard, he bought it; he wanted to hang himself and he couldn’t; against his will he was forced to fulfill prophecy.

Acts 1:20, “For it is written in the book of Psalms,” verse 20 resumes verse 17, verses 18-19 have been a parenthesis of editorial comments by Luke. “For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein,” that means, “let his habitation be desolate” means let his place in the family be vacant forever, let that family be childless, it’s a curse, and it comes from Psalm 69:26; it is an imprecatory section of the Psalms. We call it imprecatory because imprecatory means cursing; “Let no man dwell therein and his office let another take.” And Peter’s next quote is from Psalm 109:8, the picture is that Judas had a vast inheritance; had Judas trusted the Lord he could have been an apostle; his name could have been written in the foundation of that city of Revelation 21 and it says “let his office another take,” God says I gave him a chance, I brought him within the community of believers; Judas was identified publicly as a believer when he really wasn’t. He had potential to him all the operating assets of an apostle. Now said God, take it from him and give all those assets to someone else deserving of them; that’s what this is saying.

Therefore Peter says in Acts 1:21, “Of these men who have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, [22] Beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that he was taken up from us,” there’s your qualification for an apostle according to the first Christian definition of an apostle and you see if you look carefully at the definition of verse 22 Paul does not qualify because Paul was not with Jesus from the baptism of John. The qualifications for an apostle was that they had to be with Jesus from John the Baptist all the way down through the death, through the resurrection, through the ascension. That is a divine viewpoint of the life of Christ. Now I know I usually think of the life of Christ from the virgin birth to His death, but that’s not the life of Christ they’re thinking of. They’re thinking of from the baptism of John to His ascension. That’s kind of interesting. Did it every dawn on you that’s exactly the outline of all four Gospels. Who wrote those four Gospels; they were me either who were apostles themselves or who were taught by apostles and all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all begin with basically in the overall argument the baptism of John. And they all finish out with the resurrection and ascension. Why did God want this? The Church had to be founded on apostolic grounds of eyewitnesses to the entire life of Christ, not just to His resurrection, the entire life of Christ. The gospel tradition had to be an eyewitness tradition and thus even though a person may have been a genuine believer, may have genuinely been obedient to the Word of God, you could not be an apostle unless you had been a believer all the way back to the baptism of John. Why? Because the apostolic basis of the Church must be eyewitness history; contrary to Dr. Lightner religion does enter the domain of space/time history.

And so it says, such an one “must be ordained to be a witness with of his resurrection.” I want you to look at that last phrase because that’s the way they used to think in terms of Christian witness. Notice it doesn’t say that such an one must be ordained to the Christian ministry. It doesn’t say such one must be ordained as a spokesman of the Church. It does say such an one “must be ordained as a witness to the resurrection” and that tells you what was emphasized in the early days of the Christian faith. Not the cross but the resurrection. Now history has made the cross the symbol of the Christian faith but according to Luke that’s wrong. According to Luke the symbol of the Christian faith is the empty tomb; the resurrection of Christ is the symbol of the Christian faith.

What happened; Acts 1:23, “And they appointed two,” by the way, the method of lot here is the same method used in Proverbs 16:33, it was an Old Testament system of God’s will; it was legitimate until Pentecost; Pentecost has not happened yet so they’re simply reverting back to the Old Testament system. “And they appointed two, Joseph, [called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus], and Matthias.” Now one day, we don’t know when it happened but there was a group of girls, Philip’s daughters, mentioned in the book of Acts who were interviewed by somebody who in turn told Eusebius about it, and these girls knew about Joseph and they told this man who had done this work that Joseph one day was confronted with a group of heretics that denied that Jesus was indeed the Christ, and Joseph was a man of few words and a lot of action, and while these people challenged him to prove the Christian faith he reached down and took a cup, a cup that was filled with venom from poison and said you doubt that Jesus is the Christ, I drink this in His name, and he drank it and as they stood there watching him ready to drop dead he didn’t drop dead, and that was the way Joseph bore testimony to the Christian faith. Now that’s not standard operating procedure but that’s what Joseph was known for in history.

Now Matthias, what was he noted for in history. Matthias went down to Ethiopia, he had a ministry there, again to the black race, along with Matthew and he came back, died somewhere in the Roman Empire, in the center, near Rome, and Constantine exhumed his bones for some reason, 300 AD there about, took his bones up and buried them in Germany. And so of all the original apostles he’s buried in the northern most piece of real estate, Germany. That’s just so that some of you won’t walk away and say well, Matthias couldn’t have been the 12^th apostle because we never hear of him again. Oh yes you do if you read your history.

Acts 1:24, “And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, who knows the hearts of all men, show us which of these two Thou has chosen.” In this prayer they call God by a certain name; we call Him Father, or God, but in the early church they had another name for God; it’s one word, heart-knower, and you’ll see this is the book of Acts, as they prayed to God, they’d say oh God, the heart-knower, obviously focusing on His omniscience. “Oh God, the heart-knower of all, show us which of these two You have chosen, [25] That he may take part, or the lot of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, in order that,” purpose clause, “in order that he might go to his own place.” See again the fascination with the death of the heretic and his end. Contrary to modern writers of fiction in Hollywood and TV programs the people that wrote the Bible did believe in the bad guys and the good guys. And they did want the good guys to win.

Acts 1:26, “And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven [apostles].” Now in closing I want to show you why I believe that Matthias was the 12^th apostle and not Paul. You’ll notice it says “he was numbered with the eleven,” he was officially considered as part of the twelve. And if you turn to Acts 2;14 when Peter gets up on the day of Pentecost to teach it says, “But Peter, standing up with the eleven,” not the ten, but “with the eleven,” which means there are twelve, there’s a closed circle of twelve men. Matthew 19 and Revelation 21 say that these twelve men’s names are written on the New Jerusalem; not Paul, these men. Paul was a special apostle; because he was a special apostle that was precisely why his apostleship was doubted and he had to fight all the time, what’s going on in Corinthians and Ephesus and Colosse, he always had to defend his apostleship because he was an oddball, he was out of that circle of the twelve. Paul was not the 12^th apostle, Matthias was.

What can we draw from this passage. Next week we’re going to begin with Pentecost; you see, the Church is in crisis; the Church was born with defection. There’s a fascination with Judas, how could he have been with the twelve, the innermost circle of the club, and fall away. How could he do this; and from the human point of view you get heartsick. How do we know that Peter isn’t an apostate; how do we know John isn’t an apostate. How do we know this whole organization is going to hold up against the blows of history. How do we know? Because the apostate’s guts fell out on The Field of Blood; that’s how we know. God purges the Church of the rebels and right here in the first chapter of Acts is a story of how God’s Spirit works in history to destroy and to weed out those who deny the true nature. God is a mighty God in the book of Acts and He will not permit Rome or anything else to affect and destroy His Church.

Shall we stand and sing……