SPIRIRUAL DIARY FOR 8/29/2021 9:54 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“His Name”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 10:ab
Message of the
verse: “And Judas Iscariot, the one
who betrayed Him.”
In today’s short SD we will be looking at what the name
of Judas Iscariot means. Judas at this
time period was a very common name as even one of our Lord’s half-brothers was
named Judas, but when we read his letter in the Word of God it is called Jude,
as I suppose that he did not want to be identified with the name Judas. Judas was the second name for one of the other
apostles, Thaddaeus as we saw when we looked at him in an earlier SD. Judas is a personalized form of Judah, the
southern kingdom during the Jewish monarchy and the Roman province of Judea
during the time of Christ. There are
some scholars who believe that the name means “Yahweh (or Jehovah) leads,” and
others believe that it refers to one who is the object of praise. Now with either meaning, it was a tragic
misnomer in the case of Judas Iscariot.
MacArthur writes “No human being has ever been less directed by the Lord
or less worthy of praise.”
Now let us look at “Iscariot” to see what this name
means. Man of Kerioth and that was a
very small town in Judea, which was about twenty-three miles south of Jerusalem
and some seven miles from Hebron. Here
is an interesting fact “Judas is the only apostle whose name includes a
geographical identification, possibly because he was the only Judean among the
Twelve. All the others, including Jesus,
were from Galilee in the north. Judean
Jews generally felt superior to the Jews of Galilee; and although Judas himself
was from a rural village, he probably did not fit well into the apostolic band”
writes John MacArthur.
Lord willing we will be
looking at the call of Judas in our next SD, and that section will also be very
interesting.
8/29/2021 10:06 AM
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