SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/6/2024 9:16 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Kiss of the Traitor”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
26:48-50a
Message of the verses: “48 Now he who was
betraying Him gave them a sign, saying, "Whomever I kiss, He is the one;
seize Him." 49 Immediately Judas went to Jesus and said, "Hail, Rabbi!"
and kissed Him. 50 And Jesus said to him, "Friend, do what you have
come for.’”
“So after
receiving the morsel he went out immediately; and it was night” (John 13:30) This verse
speaks of when Judas left the upper room right after Satan entered into him,
and the highlighted part of this verse has always spoke volumes to me. Terrible things happen many times when it is
night and this was the most terrible, but also the best thing that would happen
as Jesus Christ would have His fake trials in the night and then would be
crucified the next day. Judas would go
directly to the chief priests, with whom he had already consummated the
agreement to betray Jesus for the price of 30 pieces of silver as seen in
Matthew 26:14-16. “Judas had been
looking for a good opportunity to betray Jesus to them apart from the multitude”
(Matt. 26:6). The verses we are looking
at in this section gave Judas the ideal time, as Judas knew where Jesus and His
disciples would go after the Passover meal that is to the Garden of
Gethsemane. “Now Judas also, who was
betraying Him, knew the place, for Jesus had often met there with His disciples”
(John 18:2). This place was way away
from the crowds, even the great crowds of the Passover celebrations.
MacArthur
writes “Judas was severely disappointed that Jesus did not turn out to be the
kind of Messiah he expected. Jesus did
not overthrow Rome or even the powerful Jewish religious leaders, and
consequently He had acquired no positions of prestige and power with which to
reward His disciples. Instead of
teaching t hem how to conquer and control Jesus taught them how to submit and
serve. Instead of Judas’s being richer
than when he began to follow Jesus, it is quite likely he was poorer—except for
the money he stole from the group’s treasury (John 12:6).”
I
have mentioned that by this time Judas was already possessed by Satan as seen
in Luke 22:3, so what he did was no longer under his control. Yet it was under the compulsion of his own unbelief,
greed, and ambition that he had opened himself to Satan’s presence.
As
he delivered Jesus up to betray Him it was not only in his mind to do this but
in the mind of Satan, the mind of the Jewish religious leaders, and in the mind
of Rome as this was a problem for them too.
Here is the truth: This was in “the
predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” ages before it entered the mind of
Satan or the minds of those godless men as seen in Acts 2:23. Even while doing Satan’s business, Judas and
his co-conspirators were being used to fulfill a divinely ordained plan that
would result in the salvation of sinners like the every ones set on killing
Jesus.
MacArthur
writes “Because it was dark and because many in the multitude probably did not
know Jesus by sight, Judas, the one who was betraying Him, had prearranged a
sign, saying, ‘Whomever I shall kiss, He is the one; seize Him.’”
6/6/2024 9:42 AM
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