SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/2/2024 7:35 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Attack of the Crowd”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 26:47
Message of the
verse: “47
While He was still speaking, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, came up
accompanied by a large crowd with swords and clubs, who came from the
chief priests and elders of the people.”
“While He
was still speaking” refers to Jesus talking to
the eleven disciples in the garden, admonishing them to be spiritually vigilant
and announcing to them His imminent betrayal (“45 Then He came to the disciples and said to
them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and
the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 “Get up, let us
be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!"). Now we go on and look at the following part
of verse 47 “behold, Judas, one
of the twelve, came up.”
I
had never thought about what MacArthur brings up in looking at verse 47 where
Matthew writes “one of the twelve.” This
of course refers to Judas and that is what is kind of strange because he was in
the very act of betrayal. MacArthur
writes “One would think Matthew would have been loath to refer to him in such a
way. By the time the gospels were
written, Judas’s name had long been a byword among Christians, a synonym for
treachery and infamy. Why, we might
wonder, was he not referred to as the false disciple or the one who counted
himself among the twelve?
“But,
in fact, all four gospel writers specifically speak of Judas as ‘one of the
twelve’ (Matt. 26:14, 47; Mark 14:10, 20, 43; Luke 22:47; John 6:71), whereas
no other disciple is individually designated in that way. The writer clearly identify Judas as the
betrayer of Jesus, but they do not speak of him with overt disdain or
hatred. They are remarkably restrained
in their descriptions and assessments of him, never using derogatory epithets
or fanciful episodes, as did many extrabiblical writers.”
MacArthur
goes on to talk about some of these extra Biblical writers: “The apocryphal writing The Story of Joseph of Arimathea taught that Judas was the son of
the brother of the high priest Caiaphas and that he was sent by Caiaphas to
infiltrate the disciples and discover a way to destroy Jesus.
“According
to another apocryphal writing, The Acts
of Pilate Judas went home after the betrayal and found his wife roasting a
chicken. When he told her he was
planning to kill himself because he was afraid Jesus would rise from the dead
and take vengeance on him, she replied that Jesus would no more rise from the
dead that the chicken she was cooking would jump out of the fire and crow—at which
instant the chicken was said to have done just that.”
That
is enough of these stories for a Sunday morning, and even though I am not
teaching Sunday school any longer I still want to attend Sunday school this
morning, and so we will continue with more of MacArthur’s stories about Judas
in the next SD. 6/2/2024 7:59 AM
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