“JUDAS ISCARIOT: ‘WHO BETRAYED HIM’”
TEXT: JOHN 13:1-6a, 21-30
Sunday, January 25, 2004
It is good to be back with you. It seems like it has been forever since I’ve been up here. I know it has felt the same for you, hasn’t it? I’ve been trying to get to this series, but one thing or another put it off. We had our missionary in town and I really wanted to hear from him, then the Mortgage Burning on the 11th, and the 18th I got the flu and it was awful. Man I would rather have been here than have had the flu – it was awful. Finally we are getting to it on the 25th and it is largely really out of my wife’s prodding.
About three years ago, I think in 2001, I started this series at my former church and I only got to the third disciple; we were called here and never got to complete the series. Members had mentioned how much they enjoyed going through the apostles, and my wife has since been asking me over and over again, when are you going to do the apostles? When are you going to do the apostles? I want to hear on the apostles. And of course being the manly man that I am, a strong leader in my home, when my wife tells me over and over to do something, I do it. And I said yes dear, I will do it. It flows well with last year, actually the last two years. We focused on the life of Christ so it is fitting then, in this year, to focus on those who walked with Christ.
Did the lifestyle of the disciples meet and match the claims that Jesus made about himself? It is easy to say some things about yourself. Now how are those things reflected in the people around you who are with you 24/7? Do the lifestyle and the changes you see in the disciples’ lives match the claims Jesus made about himself or do they not? So as we look at the disciples, we will be answering one of those questions. Is Jesus really who he said he was or are the claims he made not reflected in their lifestyle? We will look at the disciples themselves, who they were, what they did, what affect Jesus had on them, and what their lives say to us. The timing is good as well, because we are going to do a series called the 40 Days of Purpose which basically answers one question – “Why am I here?” It is going to be a tremendous series and this is a great prelude to it as we look at the disciples whom God called.
Who does God call into ministry? Is the ministry the unique calling for the spiritually gifted? You know, people like me, or is ministry for us all? Does God call us all into ministry? Who does God use? Who does God call? Our first disciple we are taking this morning is Judas Iscariot. We are taking him first because we are doing the list of the disciples in reverse. You will find that in all the gospels there is a list of the disciples. It is in Matthew 10, Luke 6, Mark 3, and Acts 1. In every list Judas Iscariot is mentioned last. So we are going to take the disciples in reverse order leading up towards Easter; Palm Sunday ends with Peter, which then points to who Easter is all about, Jesus, on Easter Sunday. So we are leading to a climax.
Judas Iscariot -- Iscariot is not his last name. The word Iscariot is only used in the gospels to differentiate him from the other Judas, because the other Judas didn’t want to be known or associated with Judas Iscariot. He was Judas, the son of James, also named Thaddeus. So they added Iscariot to differentiate between the two because the other Judas didn’t want to be known for what Judas Iscariot did. Iscariot means, simply, man from Cariot. Cariot was a city in Judea 12 miles south of Hebron, which means Judas Iscariot was the only apostle not from Galilee. He was from Judea. Jesus should have stayed north but he went south one time and it cost him. It is this Judas Iscariot whose name has now gone down in history with great infamy. He betrayed the Son of God. In fact, the phrase that is always associated with his name, and I included it in the bulletin, “who betrayed him,” referring to Jesus. How would you like your name to be associated with that phrase? “Who betrayed him.” Was he really the worst of men? Jesus said it would have been better if he had not been born. Who was he? Was he all bad, and what lessons do we learn from his life, and what warnings does God pose through this man Iscariot?
To answer that question I am going to look at John 13 which gives a good glimpse of this man and also Jesus’ graciousness in reaching out to him. It has a lot of themes from this life and here is what it says:
It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.
The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’
* * *
After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, ‘I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.’
His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, ‘Ask him which one he means.’
Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, ‘Lord, who is it?’
Jesus answered, ‘It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.’ Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.
‘What you are about to do, do quickly,’ Jesus told him, but no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the Feast, or to give something to the poor. As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.
What did we learn about this disciple, Judas Iscariot? Well, to be honest, he wasn’t a bad guy. You would have really liked Judas Iscariot. He wasn’t the worst of all men that have ever lived. A lot of portraits are painted of Judas with this little eyeball sticking up and a kind of dark, sinister cast, but he was nice. It shocked the disciples to find out who it was. They had no idea; that is how nice a guy Judas was.
What are some indications of how nice this guy was? Well, they were in the upper room and Jesus says, “someone is going to betray me”, and you would think now, everyone would say it is obvious, it is Judas, but nobody concluded it could possibly have been Judas. Even when he gets up and leaves right after Jesus makes the prediction, it seems obvious to us. But the disciples see him as the treasurer. They concluded only two things, two reasons he could be leaving, and neither one was that he went to betray Jesus. He is going to buy some more food; he is going to give a gift to the poor. It is not possible for Judas to betray Jesus. It did not enter their minds. He was that kind of guy. It is especially true in light of the fact that Jesus gave him in the Passover what is referred to as the “sop.” That special morsel of bread which you extend to only one person in the group, the person you deem as your friend, your special friend, that night. And if you study the room assignments, you notice that Judas is actually in the third position. There is John, Jesus and Judas, and Judas is in the seat of the person of honor that night.
Now for us we see that as a tremendous act of God’s graciousness reaching out to Judas. Even while Judas is intent to betray him, Jesus still reaches out to him trying to change his heart, trying to change his life. But from the opposite side, the disciples thought Judas couldn’t possibly be doing this because he is Jesus’ special friend. And, when you are a special friend to someone in that culture, it is unfathomable, I mean it doesn’t enter a person’s mind. It is absolutely culturally taboo to then go and turn your friend in. You know it is hard to find a taboo that it is equal to today because there are no taboos in our culture anymore, but it is kind of like if the bridesmaid slept with the groom of her best friend the night before. I mean it is that taboo. It is unthinkable and yet Judas does it, and he is the treasurer. He is a pretty nice guy and he is the treasurer.
Who do churches make treasurer? People who have been around, whom you’ve learned to trust implicitly. You know they are of such character that you like them. You know they are trustworthy so you give them that responsibility. Now, knowing that he was deceptive in this way would also say some other things about him- that he was a pretty smooth talker. People really liked him, he was very gregarious, and he won their trust. So Judas, if you would have been there, was a very likeable guy; he was a man of faith. John 6 is a terrible time that Jesus had. He preaches the sermon on the bread of life, and it says that first everyone grumbled, and then they deserted him - except the twelve - and Judas is part of his twelve who declared, “Lord where will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe that you are the One, the holy One of God,” who made that profession.
The twelve. Who was included in the twelve? Judas Iscariot. He was a man of tremendous, courageous faith as well. You find it in John 11 when they are going back to pray for Lazarus, and Thomas said, you know what, don’t go back to Jerusalem, they are going to kill you. Jesus said I am going anyway. Thomas says let’s go and die with him. Who went with him? Judas Iscariot was willing to go to Jerusalem and die with Jesus according to Thomas. And Judas had a very productive ministry. In the calling of the twelve disciples here is how it is described. In Matthew 10:1:
He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
This happened twice. He was also a part of the 72: Judas went around preaching the good news, driving out the demonic, healing diseases and sickness. That is amazing to me! I can’t imagine Judas in prayer services laying hands on people and they are getting well. He is driving out the demonic, preaching the gospel with fire inside him, being effective. I am sure there are people who would testify today how Judas touched their lives for Christ.
How then did he fall so far? This is one of the messages from the lessons in his life. How could anyone who was that type of disciple and follower of Jesus at that height fall to the depths of betrayal. How? I guess it poses a warning to us. The longer we are Christians, the longer we are believers, the easier and easier it becomes for us to take the Lord for granted, and the easier and easier it becomes for us to coast in our spiritual life. Because you know what, now we have learned all the jingles. We know what to say, we know the Christian smile to have, we know how to answer questions right theologically. We know how to pretend very well, while on the inside we are dying. And there are secret things in our lives, like in the secret life of Judas, that have now crept in that no one else knows about. But they are hurting us, they are affecting our lives.
I feel the same way about our church, about the Presbyterian Church (USA). Yesterday, I was at Presbytery and we had a vote on partial birth abortion. Now, number one, as a Christian, I can’t imagine any church, any civil society, allowing such brutal acts to take place in our world. I can’t imagine, as a Christian, as a church, that abortion exists at all, but to me personally, it is the height to which our church has fallen. Our church is more secular than the U.S. government on this issue. In our church, I knew our church was the church of the frontier pioneers who preached the gospel with passion. How could we have fallen so far? And I think of our own society. You know you look on the web, it is utter debauchery, and I wonder in our society how could we have fallen so far so quickly. I pray to God, God how low can we go and where is the bottom and how do we recover?
Think of Judas and the warning he presents for us. It is a call for all of us to be careful about being complacent in our walk with God because, like Judas, we can fall a long way, and it is hard to recover once you have fallen that far. He is also a man known in Scripture as being chosen by Christ and Jesus had thousands of options to go with and he chose Judas, one of the twelve out of thousands, because he really believed he was the right man.
Now you might say, yeah, he believed he was the right man. He was the right man because God needed someone to betray him. He needed someone, he needed Judas. And there is a sense in a lot of Christians, a sense of compassion for Judas, and a sense that God seems to set him up. There is a passage where it even says that Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him. So why would Jesus, knowing Judas would fall to the temptation, put him in a place where he would be tempted and therefore fall? Is God liable? Well, I could go forever on this question, but to me the crucial crux of the whole thing is the issue of predictability. This is the crucial question: Can we know something will occur, can we even predict it to happen, and can that thing occur which we predicted without our causing it? And the answer is yes. We do it all the time.
For instance, advertising. The reason why companies will shell out $1 to $2 billion for a 30 to 60 second spot during the Superbowl is because they know with absolute certainty it is predicted that sales will go up 12 to 15 percent. Why does Pepsi advertise? They waste millions of dollars every year because they know the day after they advertise at the Superbowl their sales go up every time 12 to 15 percent. When they flash a picture of a Coke can at a ball game, they know that 15 seconds after the flash of the picture, 2000 people will get up in the stadium and go get a Coke. It is predictable, but did anyone cause those 2000 people to get up, to open their wallets and buy the Coke? No. It was predictable. It was predicted by 50% of the people that the Eagles would lose last week. Now you might have predicted it. They might have let you down again but did you in predicting it, in having it happen, did you cause it to happen? No, you didn’t. The Fraternal Order of Police will tell you before every holiday that on this holiday, I believe it is Memorial Day Weekend, 20 to 25 people will die on the roads, so drive carefully. And what happened? 20 to 25 people died that weekend. It was predicted. It happened, but did the police cause it to happen? Absolutely not. They didn’t make anyone’s car go on the road. Insurance companies make money this way. They know exactly how many people per 10,000 will die in any age group. And what happens every year? The same number of people die in each age group. It is predictable, it occurs, but did the insurance companies cause it? No. If, as human beings we can do this, look at human behavior and predict possible outcomes and they happen, how much more can an all-wise God who knows us and observes all of life, and knows how we will respond, how much more will he be able to observe something, predict it, have it occur and he never caused it?
What is clear in Scriptures is that Judas really chose what he did and he bears responsibility for his choice. Judas had the same exact stimulus as all the other 11. He could easily have turned out like Peter or James or John or Thomas. He saw the same things. In fact, Judas received preferential treatment in several places that other disciples did not and he chose otherwise. Why? Why did this great guy do such awful things? Because there is one secret flaw in his life, one that Jesus warned about earlier. The disciples racked their brains then they write in the gospels trying to explain Judas’ action. The only reason they could come up with, the only motivation they discover in his life, was his motive of money. Judas did these things because of money. He has greed as a motivation in his life and it is really spelled out by the gospel of John. John 12:6 for instance tells a story of how Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anointed Jesus’ feet with oil, and in response the disciples, in particular Judas, stands up and rebukes her. Jesus tells him to quiet down and John tells why Judas objected. It says this in John 12:6:
He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
It is interesting all four gospels point to this very event as the breaking point where Judas finally decided to betray Jesus. Why? Was it because of the rebuke? No. It is because Judas faced the biggest payday in Jesus’ entire ministry and Jesus cut it off. He did not profit by this action and then Jesus used a unique word. He also talks about his burial. Before he just talked about dying. They thought he meant metaphorically. Jesus used this word burial here, a very concrete term. Jesus is planning on cashing out. And so before Jesus cashes out, Judas cashes in because this is his last opportunity. So the cliché is right. If you want to see someone’s motivations, follow the money trail, and just like Jesus warned, you cannot serve God and money. Perhaps he said that very thing because he knew Judas was doing that very thing. He was seeking money. Money was too important in his life, and in pursuing it, he fell prey to it.
If money is what led Judas astray and it’s what Jesus warned against, then it would tell us that money has the ability to cause us to go astray. You know, it is amazing, it is amazing to me. We watch these shows, Fear Factor is one of them. What people are willing to do for money. People are willing to suck worms for money. In fact, there is a book written called Are You Normal About Money? What surprised the author is the length to which people go for money: 21% will wolf down a worm for $300, 59% would shave their heads for $10,000, and 60% will commit adultery for $1,000,000. What’s sad to me is what our daughters are willing to do for money. And I look at my daughters and I pray to God that as a father, they will because of how I treat them and what I am unwilling to look at, that I will endear them with such respect they wouldn’t think about demeaning themselves at any cost. And that is my prayer for your daughters and your sons as well. What people are willing to do for money!
As a pastor, I have observed three churches and every church is the same. The rolls at each church are filled with people who are no longer in the church. It is largely out of the pursuit of wealth that most people really wander from the church. In their pursuit of the American dream, it seduced them to the point where, instead of following God, they began to follow money and the acquisition of it. How do I know that I am teetering in that direction? Well, one way of knowing is looking at the life of Judas. If you are willing to compromise moral and spiritual principles for the acquisition of wealth, then money is too important in your life. If you are willing to exchange material goals in your life for spiritual ones, then money is too much of a god in your life. If your life is too preoccupied with the acquisition of wealth, then it has a too important role in your life. If you are willing to sell your health for the acquisition of wealth, and then are willing to turn around and spend your wealth to get your health back, then money is too important in your life. What surprises me as well in this issue is how many people in looking at the claims of Jesus on their lives, where he asked them to give their lives to him, believe that is too high a cost, but will turn around and give their lives over to financial issues. How many people have taken their lives due to financial downturn? They wouldn’t have thought of giving their lives to Christ but they gave their lives to wealth. How important is money in your life?
You know the real root problem of Judas really was a spiritual condition. Even though he had great faith, it said of Judas, even in John, chapter 6, despite such great faith Jesus called him a devil. Why? Because Judas had one inherent problem, he committed Jesus to his life but he never committed his life to Jesus, and there is a difference. One you are a disciple, and one you are not. A lot of people commit Jesus to their life, meaning they are willing to follow Jesus as long as it improves their lives, fits in with their values, fits in with their morals, fits in with your social views, fits in with your political views but, if Jesus has a claim on these things, it is surprising how many people opt out. Have you given Jesus to your life or have you given your life to Jesus? Because when you give your life to Jesus, what you are saying is that Lord, I am tired of leading my life, in fact I have led it and it is not working. I want you to take leadership of my life and I want to learn. Teach me what I should believe, how I should live, what the values and purpose of my life are. Lord, spill that into my life and I accept it. Whatever you say, I accept it. I accept it as your disciple. Is that your heart or have you simply committed Jesus to your life in that it is still your life? It is still your life. Is your life still your life? If so, you are making the same mistake Judas did, and other things will pull you away from Christ; or, have you given your life to Jesus?
John Stott says this: When the choice is seen for what it is, a choice between the creator and creature, between the glorious personal God and the miserable thing called money, between worship and idolatry, it seems inconceivable that anyone could make the wrong choice, and yet it happens over and over again and it happened in Judas’ own life. What is sad about Judas’ life is that he had such potential of being a dynamic man of God, but he chose not to because he gave Jesus his life and not his life to Jesus and, as a result, money took a greater part of his life and it robbed him of his soul, and I pray that we do not make the same mistake. In this affluent culture we live in, it is so hard not to. Let’s take the example and warnings in Judas’ life for ourselves.
[Let’s pray.]
