daily java

Daily Java:

The Festival of Unleavened Bread, which is also called Passover, was approaching. The leading priests and teachers of religious law were plotting how to kill Jesus, but they were afraid of the people’s reaction. Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve disciples, and he went to the leading priests and captains of the Temple guard to discuss the best way to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted, and they promised to give him money. So he agreed and began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus so they could arrest him when the crowds weren’t around. (Luke 22:1-6)

Why did Judas decide to betray Jesus? That’s a question people have asked for 2000 years.

How is it that someone can walk and talk with Jesus for three years and ultimately turn against him? how is it that someone can hear Jesus speak of the love and mercy of God for three years and then take money to betray him?

People always say, If I could just have a few minutes with Jesus, just to talk to him and hear him say something good, I would be so much more spiritual. This man spent three years with Jesus and became a lying, traitorous and greedy thief.

How is that/? How is it possible for the words and actions of Jesus to have absolutely no impact on your life, that you end up taking money to betray the one who loves you.

I don’t know. And no one else knows either what it was that Judas was thinking. You watch movies and read books on the life of Jesus and his death and the writers interpret what they think. But we still do not know what it was that drove Judas Iscariot to do what he did.

Maybe he wanted to push Jesus into proclaiming his kingship and setting up the great new Israelite kingdom. Maybe he was mad at Jesus for something. Maybe he was just stupid.

Whatever it was, it resulted in the authorities being led to the Garden of Gethsamene and the betrayal of our Lord into their hands. After all, there were no pictures on wanted posters or anything like that.

Isaiah says that Jesus was pretty ordinary as far as appearance went.  

There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. (Isaiah 53:2). 

That meant that Jesus pretty much looked like everybody else and they needed somebody to point him out. They had probably always seen him at a distance and it was dark when they came.

They had to have a traitor and Judas was it.

He realized the enormity of his action afterward, but it was too late. He tried to give the money back but they wouldn’t take it. He couldn’t live with what he did, so he hanged himself.

A pathetic, useless end to a pathetic, useless life. His life legacy was the use of his name to denote a traitor. That’s all. Nothing good came out of his life for us to remember.

He had been one of the Twelve, inner circle to the Messiah. He had access to the literal Word of God, the wisdom of the ages in human form, and threw it away.

And we don’t even know why. But satan entered his heart and when he did, Judas was gone. The process had probably been going on for a while and satan’s entrance into his heart was the final action to kill off any good that might have been.

I have known people who have thrown away their lives for something stupid, and I wondered why. What would cause them to leave something so good for something so dumb.

Of course, God will take them back. God would have taken Judas back in a New York minute. But instead, Judas hanged himself because he figured all was lost.

What a waste of someone so potentially great. Jesus would not have chosen a guy just to be the goat. When he chose Judas, he thought Judas would do well. But he turned. The money in the treasury was the galvanizing agent to turn him and as John said, he was a thief.

But still. What a waste. And how sad an end.