SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 9/12/2016/ 10:30AM
My
Worship Time Focus: Pt-2 The Hypocritical
Self-Interest of Judas
Bible
Reading & Meditation
Reference: John
12:4-8
Message of the verses: “4 But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples,
who was intending to betray Him, said, 5
"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given
to poor people?" 6 Now he said this, not because he was concerned about
the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to
pilfer what was put into it. 7 Therefore Jesus said, "Let her alone, so
that she may keep it for the day of My burial. 8 “For you always have the poor
with you, but you do not always have Me."
The
first thing that I need to say is that Saturday morning after finishing my
first Spiritual Diary I was trying to upload an update for windows 10 and it
caused my computer to crash so I quickly called the man who works on my
computers and he did a quick fix on it as he had to take the hard drive out and
copy all of the files to his desktop and then reformate my hard drive and put
windows 10 back on it and then reinstall all of my data back onto the hard
drive. I am thankful to the Lord that
all of my Spiritual Diaries, somewhere over 4500 of them were saved and so I am
back to doing more of them as we proceed through the books John and Zechariah.
We
are looking at just how wicked Judas really was, and when we say this we have
to understand that we need to look at him through the eyes of God and not
through our own human eyes, for remember what Jesus said that we posted in our
last SD that it would have been better if he had not been born. Judas is the chief of all apostates which
will receive the insensitive punishment in hell, we may believe that people
like Hitler or Stalin will receive that kind of harsh punishment but although
they will receive a more insensitive type of punishment that say a person who
has never heard the gospel they will not receive as much punishment as the
apostates who have sit under the teaching of the Bible, knowing that they were
born a sinner and needed to repent, but will not do it. Let us look back to John 6:70-71 “70 Jesus answered
them, "Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?" 71 Now
He meant Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going
to betray Him.”
“12 "While I was with them, I was keeping
them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of
them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be
fulfilled (John 17:12).”
Jesus
then rebukes Judas saying to her “"Let her alone, so that she may keep it
for the day of My burial.” MacArthur
writes “Jesus obviously did not mean that Mary would keep the perfume (or at
least part of it) until His burial, since she had just poured it all out (cf.
14:3). While commentators disagree on
how to understand these words, the most satisfactory solution is to understand
an ellipsis (contraction) in the Lord’s statement. Supplying the missing words, the sense would
be, ‘Let her alone; she did not sell the perfume [as you wish she had], so that
she could keep it for the day of my burial’ (cf. D. A. Carson).”
I
feel it is important to digress a bit and give a quote from Dr. Warren Wiersbe
on some of the things he said about Judas, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. “What Mary did was a blessing to Jesus and a
blessing to her own life. She was also a
blessing to the home, filling it with fragrance (see Phil. 4:18 ‘But I have
received everything in full and have an abundance; I am amply supplied, having
received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice,
well-pleasing to God’); and today, she is a blessing to the church around the
world. Her one act of devotion in the
little village of Bethany still sends ‘ripples of blessing.’
“But
not so Judas! We call our daughters ‘Mary,’
but no parent would call a son ‘Judas.’
His very name is listed in the dictionary as a synonym for
treachery. Mary and Judas are seen in
contrast in Proverbs 19:7—‘The memory of the just is blessed, but the name of
the wicked shall rot.’ ‘A good name is
better than precious ointment,’ says Ecclesiastes 7:1; and Mary had both.”
“As
we look at this event, we see some ‘representative people’ who are examples to
us. Martha represents work as she served the dinner she has
prepared for the Lord. This was just as
much a ‘fragrant offering’ as was Mary’s ointment (see Heb. 13:16). Mary represents worship, and Lazarus represents witness
(John 1:9-11). People went to Bethany just to be able to see this man who had been raised from
dead.” It is always good to hear from
Warren Wiersbe.
John
MacArthur concludes his thoughts on Judas:
“Judas now stood at the crossroads.
Unmasked as a hypocrite, pretending to care for the poor while in
reality embezzling from the common purse, he faced the ultimate decision. He could fall at Jesus’ feet in humble,
penitent repentance, confess his sin, and seek forgiveness. Or he could pridefully harden his heart,
refuse to repent, surrender to Satan’s influence, and betray the Lord. Tragically and sinfully, he chose the latter
course, with full sole culpability for its consequences, though it fulfilled
the purpose of God for the sacrifice of His Son (cf. 12:18-19). Immediately after this incident, ‘Judas
Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went off to the chief priests in order to
betray Him to them. They were glad when
they heard this, and promised to give him money. And he began seeking how to betray Him at an
opportune time’ (Mark 14:10-11).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: There are many people in this story to follow
in order to do good things for the Lord as Dr. Wiersbe pointed out, and so I
need to follow them, and not follow the one who did the wrong thing in this
story.
My
Steps of Faith for Today:
Do a better job in meditating on my memory verses.
Memory verses for the week: (Romans 6:10-11) “10 For the death that He
died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to
God. Even so consider yourselves to be
dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.”
Answer to our last Bible question: “Still at Sinai.”
Today’s Bible question: “What is the Mizpah benediction given in
Genesis 31:49?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/12/2016 11:27 AM
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