How Death Teaches Us to Live Abundantly (Matthew 27:6-10).
length: 78:33 - taught on Mar, 29 2026
Class Outline:
Sunday March 29,2026
Main idea: Confronting the full biblical horror of death — seen in the 30 pieces of silver, the Potter’s Field purchase, and the cursed Valley of Hinnom/Gehenna — awakens believers to live the abundant life Christ purchased, by learning to see God’s life filling even the “small things” of everyday existence.
These events are going to teach us to live and treasure the abundant life of small things - daily moments and everyday events and experiences that are full of God and therefore full of life.
Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." But they said, "What is that to us? See to that yourself!" 5 And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. 6 The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, "It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood." 7 And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter's Field as a burial place for strangers. 8 For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. 9 Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: "AND THEY TOOK THE THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER, THE PRICE OF THE ONE WHOSE PRICE HAD BEEN SET by the sons of Israel; 10 AND THEY GAVE THEM FOR THE POTTER'S FIELD, AS THE LORD DIRECTED ME."
The Potter’s Field
It is in the Valley of Hinnom, which in Greek is Gehenna.
Gehenna (Greek: geenna) is simply a transliteration of the Hebrew gēʾ hinnōm which literally means “Valley of Hinnom.”
Jesus warned of eternal judgment using that valley as a depiction of hell.
“You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?”
This is not a generic word for “hell” invented in the New Testament. It is a proper place-name taken directly from the Hebrew Bible and carried into Greek.
Jesus uses it 12 times and James once (writing to Jews) and they never explain it, which reveals that it was plainly understood by them.
Sin leads one on the road to death.
Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.
This is death without dying physically. Even for believers - death is separation, darkness, and the result of fear, lust, hatred.
The truth about death will make you love life.
The counter strategy by the devil is to minimize death. Even sin in Christianity has been minimized.
I said to them, "If it is good in your sight, give me my wages; but if not, never mind!" So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver as my wages. 13 Then the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them." So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord.
The chief priests took the thirty pieces of silver — the price of innocent blood — and with it they bought the Potter’s Field. Matthew tells us this fulfills what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah.
At first glance it looks like a mistake.
But Matthew adds one key word: “field.” For that, we turn to Jeremiah.
In Jeremiah 18, the prophet is told to go to the potter’s house where he watches a potter reshape spoiled clay on the wheel.
"Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the Lord. "Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.
The nation can be reshaped — or broken depending on their repentance.
Then, in Jeremiah 19, God sends Jeremiah to the Valley of Hinnom — the very place where the Potter’s Field would later be bought. There Jeremiah smashes an earthenware jar in front of the leaders and declares:
“Then you are to break the jar in the sight of the men who accompany you 11 and say to them, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Just so will I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter's vessel, which cannot again be repaired; and they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place for burial.”
He renames the valley the Valley of Slaughter because the people had filled it with the blood of innocent children sacrificed to Molech.
So when Matthew combines Zechariah’s thirty pieces with Jeremiah’s potter and field in the Valley of Hinnom, he is showing us something profound:
The religious leaders have valued the true Shepherd at the price of a slave, and with that blood money they have purchased a burial plot in the very place of judgment and death that Jeremiah prophesied.
Molech: heated the hands to high, high temperatures.
God specifically warns of disaster to anyone who gives his offspring to Molech, LEV 20:4-5.
Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificed their children in that valley.
As God fills good things so death fills the bad.
Death:
Definition: separation (physical death: spirit from body - to the dust you shall return; spiritual death: separation from God due to sin; second death: separation from God forever after judgment).
Physical and spiritual death came as a result of the sin of Adam (the Fall) (ROM 5:12-21).
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
The apostle Paul speaks of death as an enemy:
The last enemy that will be abolished is death
This is why the Bible never treats death romantically. It is sorrowful, ugly, and tied to evil’s victory in the short term. It is darkness, ultimate loneliness, filth, pain, hate, and fear.
We need to relate death to people again.
Silencing death’s warning:
In modern times death has been banished from daily life.
In times past, death was much more prominent in daily life and it was much more feared due to the judgment to come than it is today.
When we truly see death for what it is, we finally learn how to live.
Close:
In this passage we see death, the whole of hell, in 30 pieces of silver. Death and life fill the world in the so-called big things and the little things.
“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.”
“And he said to him, 'Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing, you are to be in authority over ten cities.'”
Little things become filled with the life of God when we see death for what it really is and realize we have been saved from it.
Having a daily near-death experience.
If you see God and life in everyone and in everything, you will really live.
The other effect that will take hold is a deeper hatred of sin. Its ugliness, its absolute wrong, its invasion into God’s world, its misplacement, its evil, its pain and harm.
The life of God is more clear to us, more real to us, when we have seen death for what it really is.
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