Traitor.
Deserter.
Turncoat.
Defector.
Betrayer.
Betrayal.
Do you know what it is to be betrayed?
Betrayal is a profound word loaded with volatile and angst-ridden emotional implications. Betrayal means disloyalty and treachery have been used to expose you to an enemy, to expose you to harm, or simply just to expose you. What you thought was protected and safe is now open and dangerous. It means someone has been unfaithful with something that you have entrusted to them. It means confidences have been disclosed and that you have been deceived, duped, and deserted. The betrayer is vile, wicked and evil. The psychological impact on the one betrayed is usually permanent to some degree, depending on the kind and type of trust betrayed and the damage done by the betrayal.
Ever been betrayed?
Ever been a betrayer?
The relationship that Jesus and Judas Iscariot had was unique in all of human history. We know quite a bit about Jesus already from our study so far and from our own experiences in reading and studying the Word and listening to sermons and Sunday School lessons throughout our Christian experience.
Today, I want us to get to know this Judas better – a lot better. His name, Judas, means either “one to be praised”, or “Jehovah leads.” Many men were named Judas in Jesus’ day. I don’t think anyone has been since that time. We are going to discover why that is.
This Judas is called Judas Iscariot, which means Judas ish (which means “man”) Kerioth, which is the name of a town about 23-24 miles southeast of Jerusalem and about 7 miles from Hebron; Judas, man of Kerioth. Kerioth was the result of several small villages in one area coming together and forming a town. The most interesting thing to note from this is that Kerioth is outside of Galilee. Galilee is where Jesus and the other eleven disciples were from. Judas is the only outsider. As an outsider, he never really fit in. He didn’t talk the same way, he didn’t dress the same way, his view of the Jewish nation was somewhat different, and he was from an area that looked down on the Galilean Jews. Yet, there was something about Jesus that drew him. When the rest of those following Jesus scattered as we saw in John 6, Judas was one of the Twelve that remained.
We have no record of Jesus calling Judas to, “Come; follow Me.” I believe that Jesus did call Judas but I also believe that Judas chose to follow Jesus for his own reasons. He wasn’t from the area. We don’t know when he attached himself to the group, but it must have been early on. The first mention that we have of him is here in Matthew 10:1-4.
It is interesting to note that, whenever the lists of the disciples are given, Judas is always the last one listed. Also, every time he is mentioned, the fact of his betrayal is noted along with his name without exception. His betrayal became his identity. In fact, as we examine the gospels we see that the seeds of his betrayal were always a part of who he was.
Yet, this aspect of his character was invisible to those around him. He didn’t look like he belonged on a wanted poster. He didn’t look like a weasely little conman. He looked and acted just like the rest of the apostles. That’s right; apostles. Judas was a “sent-out one” just like the rest of the Twelve. Look at what it says in John 13:21-22: “After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me. The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke.”
They were surprised; they had no idea who Jesus could be speaking of. These men had lived and traveled and preached and healed and cast out demons together. They had ministered right alongside Jesus together. They had lived in the closest proximity that a group of preachers could live for three and a-half years and they had no idea which of them it could be. The thought of it horrified them, and each of them feared that it might be himself that Jesus spoke of, for each of them says, “Surely, not I (Mark 14:19).” They did not know who it could be – yet, they knew by now that it could be any of them.
You could be sitting right next to a betrayer of the faith in church, at working along side them at work, or smiling at them as you pay for your groceries; you never know for sure. Outward appearance can be deceiving. Christ knows our hearts. We are to go to Him and ask Him to show us if there is a betrayer inside of us. Don’t worry about the next person – consider yourself first.
Think about this fact also. In John 13:27, Jesus turns to Judas and, after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly." Judas left and no one suspected anything. Verse 29 tells us, “Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the feast," or that he should give something to the poor.’”
This man Jesus knew clear back in John 6:70-71, was going to betray Him, for He said, "’Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.’ He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray Him."
And yet, despite knowing this, Jesus entrusted the ministry funds to this man. He must have been more gifted than the rest, even more then Matthew. Perhaps Jesus had protected Matthew from suspicion by not choosing him to handle the money. There might have been some suspicions because he had been a greedy tax-gatherer. But, Judas came without any history and without any foreknowledge on the part of the group. He must have presented himself in a very positive manner and come across as someone to be trusted.
Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of this whole story is the foreknowledge and sovereignty of God mingled with the free choice of man. In Luke 6:12-16, we have one more account of the choosing of the Twelve. In Luke’s version, we find Jesus going up to the mountain and praying all night, seeking the wisdom and direction of His Father in selecting the men who would be His inner circle.
God knew; Jesus knew that one of the Twelve would be a betrayer. In Psalm 41:9, we read this prophecy: “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.” In Psalm 55:12-14; 20-21, we see the sense of betrayal felt by the betrayed. Yet, perhaps the most significant mention of this future even comes in Zechariah 11:12-13: “Then I said to them, "If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them." And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the LORD said to me, "Throw it to the potter" – the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD, to the potter.”
Matthew records Judas’ interaction with the chief priests before and after the betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. In Matthew 26:14-16, we see that Judas is the one who approaches Jesus’ enemies, asking what they will give him to betray Jesus. The price of thirty pieces of silver is measured out and given to him. Thirty pieces of silver was the price designated by God in the Law as the restitution price to be paid the owner of a slave if that slave were to be gored by an ox. The high priests must have thought themselves quite sound in their theology by paying Judas thirty pieces of silver for Jesus. Significantly, Judas accepted it, making the Messiah merely a slave to the personal greed and desires of Judas Iscariot.
Further on, however, when Judas realizes just what he has done, just how far he has slide down the slope of sin and destruction, he tries to give the money back. Matthew 27:1-9 ties all of this together for us. Let’s read this.
The prophecy is fulfilled to the smallest of details, even answering beforehand the objections of skeptics who said that the gospels got it wrong by calling the field where Judas was buried by two different names.
The significant thing about all of this is that Jesus knew from the beginning that this would be the case with Judas, yet He chose him anyway!
Luke’s account of the selecting of the Twelve goes on to tell us that Jesus chose the same men mentioned in Matthew 10, and Judas is listed last as, “Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.”
I find that an interesting choice of words; “who became a traitor.” That seems to indicate that Judas wasn’t always that kind of man, any more than Benedict Arnold, the second most well-known traitor in history was. Both men were loyal and devoted followers of great leaders for a time. But, something happened in there circumstances and inside of them that turned them into something else.
For both, it seems that greed was the deciding factor. Judas had the constant reminder that he didn’t fit in with these backwoods-types, and he held himself somewhat aloof from them. Yet, it had to have grated on him not to be included by the others in a lot of the intimacy they shared. Remember that some of them were related and that most of them knew each other prior to becoming disciples. Judas didn’t really fit in at all.
If you feel like a misfit, like Judas did, then you have two choices: one, take it in stride and be faithful to where God has placed you despite the discomfort; or, two, rebel against it, become embittered, and follow a path of sin in your acting-out against your discomfort.
That may sound simplistic, but this is something that I know about from my own personal experience. My reaction to feeling like a misfit has created more problems and difficulties for me than my adapting has by far. Judas fell into this trap, too, I believe. It got to the place where he was in it for what he could get out of it, and then that wasn’t enough.
Sin has a way of doing that in our lives. It seems pleasurable for a while, but then the poison starts to have its effect. Our lives become rancid and uncomfortable, developing a putrid and foul air to them. Our attitudes become more irritable and more self-seeking. We become more abrasive and less gracious. We chafe under the internal conviction, yet there is something in us that refuses to turn from our sin and repent and confess and get it right with God. In our distorted thinking, we take it out on someone else. Welcome to Judas’ world.
Judas took it so far that it caused him to take his own life. He never really understood the message of the kingdom that Jesus preached and lived. He never really grasped what it was that Jesus came to accomplish in the world. Judas’ view of Jesus and of the world became so distorted and so twisted that eventually he was overtaken by Satan. Look at John 13:27; “Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’"
Satan entered him. He possessed his body and filled his mind and his heart. All of his motivations then became the same as those of Christ’s enemy, Satan, which was the destruction of the One who was to be the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation.
This is something that is hard for people to grasp. If God knew beforehand that Judas was going to do this, and if the Word teaches us that it was foreordained that Jesus was going to be betrayed, doesn’t that make Judas an innocent bystander? Doesn’t that make him a victim of the sovereignty of God?
The answer, of course is, “No,” but we need to try to understand why. Look at John 17:12. Jesus is praying to His Father before he takes His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane. He prays, “While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” The “son who was lost; the son of destruction”, that is what is meant by “the son of perdition.” He was the offspring of Satan in the sense that he would not be saved. He chose to rebel and to betray and to remain in that rebellion and betrayal, just as Satan before him had. Judas could have repented at any time, even after the consummation of his betrayal in the Garden. He chose to not bow before Jesus Christ in repentance.
Matthew tells us that he felt remorse, but nothing more.
Remorse is not repentance. Remorse is just a feeling of shame over something we have done and sadness over something we have lost. Repentance is a changing of our mind and heart and a turning to God in confession, in being in agreement with God about the exact nature and character of our wrong and the punishment that is due us for it. Repentance is accepting the gift of the “paid in full” of Christ’s atonement for our sin. Judas became God in his own life when he took his life.
It is God’s right to mete out justice, not ours. Judas took it upon himself to mete out justice to himself for what he had done. Sure he was deserving of death. But it was not his place to execute that sentence. He so missed what Jesus was all about that he was unable to receive mercy from God.
Clear back in John 6, Jesus knew what was happening inside of Judas. Jesus knew that a change was taking place in Judas’ heart. Judas was unaware that the squabbles he was experiencing were because something was wrong with him, not with the others. His discomfort with what Jesus was teaching and the attitude of sacrifice of the Savior rubbed him the wrong way. Jesus could see that things were beginning to grate on Judas and that the spiritual disciplines were becoming lacking in his life. How do I know this?
Judas had taken to stealing from the offering. In John 12:1-8, the story of where Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, taking an extremely expensive perfume and anointing Jesus’ feet with it and wiping his feet with her hair is told. John records Judas reaction in verse 5, "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?" Three hundred denarii would be almost a year’s pay for the average worker. John has already said that Judas was planning on betraying Jesus, and then goes on to say, “He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it (verse 6).”
Judas had at some point began to see the ministry of Jesus Christ as something that he could use to benefit himself. This is something that all of us have to be wary of, especially those of us in ministry, for we all have the same potential for being self-serving and self-seeking in our service to the Lord.
Judas is no different than many who have claimed to be followers of Jesus Christ throughout the centuries. Some people come to Jesus with double motives. While Judas expresses concern for the poor, his underlying motivation is greed and covetousness. This is where Judas opened the door for Satan to not only get a foothold but to eventually take over completely, exchanging any good motive that Judas may have had for the desires and motives that spring from the Prince of Darkness.
We all have to be careful of this. We none of us can afford to give sin a place in our lives. We need to consistently seek to have the mind and attitude of Christ in regard to the things that He says are unrighteous and evil. If He says it is wicked, then we need to say it is wicked and not give it a place in our lives. If He says it is holy and right, then we need to make it a part of our lives.
Let me give you one of the most prevalent areas that I see this in our lives today. For the most part, we allow into our homes and see as entertainment things that God has said are evil, wicked, sinful, and that He calls an abomination. Any and all sexual expression outside the bonds of marriage God detests. Much of what we have as entertainment today is rife with sexual sin: fornication, adultery, promiscuity, homosexuality, pornography, and the list goes on and on. This is the number one area of egress into the lives of believers that the enemy uses today.
Do I hear a “Yeah, but…”? There are no exceptions or exemptions. God has made it perfectly clear that He hates these things and that as His children and His true followers, we are to hate these things as well.
So, how do we justify being glued to shows or investing money in renting movies or reading books or magazines that present those things as okay or normal or not that bad?
This is only one area, but there are many others. I’m sure you can think of one or two yourself. The point is that we are just as susceptible to being overtaken by our sin and being overtaken by Satan as Judas was. Judas believed he was following the Messiah. Judas believed that the One he followed was the Promised One. Judas believed that Jesus was the Son of God. Well, guess what? So do Satan and his demons. Look at James 2:19. They believe and tremble as all who are lost in wickedness should. We dare not allow ourselves to follow down that path very far without turning back.
The message of Judas’ life is not how bad his betrayal of Jesus was or whether or not he had a choice in the matter: he did have a choice, just as we all do. The point of Judas’ life is that each and every one of us does have choices to make. We can choose whether or not we are going to live lives of holiness as Jesus has called us to live; we all can choose whether or not we are going to classify as evil what God classifies as evil or if we are going to see it as entertainment; we all can choose whether or not we are going to attach ourselves to the ministry of Jesus Christ in righteous service or for selfish motivations.
Wherever you are today, my prayer is that you will choose to turn and repent and confess and be forgiven and be cleansed and be made right with God and that you will cast the devil out of whatever stronghold he has established in your life so that you do not go down the path of destruction that Judas followed
Do no be fooled: every one of us is just as susceptible to it as Judas was; a man who heard and witnessed Jesus’ entire ministry firsthand. Turn to the Savior who went to the cross for you; the Savior that went to the cross even for Judas. Judas could have been redeemed; the choice was his. Make the right choice today.
Let us pray.
