SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/22/2016 8:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Intro to John 13:18-30
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 13:18-30
Message of the verses: John MacArthur entitles his seventh chapter
in his second commentary on John chapters 12-21 “Unmasking the Betrayer,” and
of course these verses speak of the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas. I suppose that when parents who are about to
have a child, and in these days they can tell which gender that child will be,
that no one in the world would want to name their little baby boy Judas. Judas is the most famous traitor in the
world. Oh we have had many different
people in world history who have been famous traitors, but none as famous as
Judas.
Judas being
one of Jesus’ twelve disciples was with Jesus for three plus years seeing all
of the wonderful miracles that He did, like feeding the 5000 and feeding the
4000, like raising people from the dead and casting out demons from many
people, things that were never ever seen since God created man, and yet Judas
would end up betraying Jesus and eventually killing himself, but never, ever
coming to Christ for salvation. Let me
make it clear that although Zechariah and other OT passages speak of this
betrayal, Judas was totally responsible for what he did.
There is
actually little we know about Judas other than his surname derives from two
Hebrew words meaning “man of Kerioth.”
MacArthur adds “That suggests that Judas was from the village of
Kerioth, either the one in Moab (Jer. 48:24, 41), or more likely the one in
Judea, south of Hebron (Josh. 15:25).
Thus Judas would have been the only one of the Twelve who was not a
Galilean, though there is no evidence that the other apostles excluded or
looked down on him as a result.”
Why would
Judas follow Jesus throughout His entire ministry and then betray Him? Well we know that all of the disciples of
Jesus thought that He was going to immediately bring the promised kingdom to
Israel, and yet the other 11 did not turn away from Him once they knew that
this was not going to happen. MacArthur
writes “But Judas was also motivated by greed, the desire for power, and
worldly ambition. As one of the inner
circle of Jesus’ followers, he no doubt hoped for an important position in the
restored kingdom.” So we see a key
reason why Judas betrayed Jesus and that reason is the age old reason of
greed. Now we know that Judas was
trusted by the other disciples as he was in control of the money box and used
to steal from it when he got the chance.
It must have been subtle when he did it because it did not seem to be
found out until later on after the Gospels were written. I have to tell a story of a family that I
worked with in my regular job for 35 years.
This family grew up in Europe during WWII, in Ukraine, as the father was
a mayor of a town there. They had to
leave because of the war and had a hard time finding food and other provisions
and so it was not uncommon for them to have to steal things in order to eat. The youngest of the sons was stealing eggs
from the farmer that they were living with and his older brother would chew him
out for stealing all the eggs out of one nest and then leaving eggs in the
other eggs. He was told to just take one
egg out of each of the nests so the farmer would not notice. While working with the middle brother as we
were both supervisors he just had to steal something because of the way he was
brought up. They did it to survive, but
Judas did it for greed. There came a
time in the life of Judas when all of his frustrations came to fruition and
that is found at the beginning of the 12th chapter of John when Mary
took a very expensive jar of perfume and anointed the body of Jesus with
it. Judas could not get his hands on
that money and so he knew that it was over for him as far as following Jesus.
We read at
the end of the introduction of Macarthur’s commentary for these verses the
following which gives us the outline that we will follow. “Now verses 18-30, the dialogue turns to the
betrayer. Jesus contrasts the eleven
eternally blessed loyal disciples with the eternally miserable traitor,
Judas. The passage may be divided into
four sections; the treachery anticipated (by the Old Testament), the treason announced
(by Christ), the Twelve astonished (by the news), and the traitor addressed (by
the Lord).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Learning about Judas and how subtle he was
makes me want to stay on guard for people around me to make sure I don’t fall
into any trap of things they are offering.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: Live for the Lord!
Memory verse for the week:
(Romans 6:14) “14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not
under law but under grace.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Samaria” (2 Kings 17:5).
Today’s Bible question:
“Who was inflicted from head to foot with bois?”
Answer in our next SD.
10/22/2016 9:35 AM
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