SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/13/2024 10:42 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 "The Contrast between Guilty
Judas and Innocent Jesus"
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:3-5
Message of the
verses: “3
Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt
remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and
elders, 4 saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." But
they said, "What is that to us? See to that yourself!" 5 And
he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he
went away and hanged himself.”
The section that we are looking at now has a lot of
MacArthur’s commentary in it, I guess I could say “extra commentary” and I say
that because that is the way that he teaches, and that is the way that I like
to be taught. In cases like this I do a
lot of quoting from his commentary, and as mentioned before I do this so that those
who read these from my blog get what I consider great teaching. Today we begin this SD by talking about “Judas’s
remorse was not repentance of sin, as the King James Version suggests. Matthew did not use metanoeo, which means a genuine change of mind and will, but metamebmai, which merely connotes regret
or sorrow. He did not experience
spiritual penitence but only emotional remorse.
Although he would not repent of his sin, he could not escape the reality
of his guilt. Genuine sorrow for sin (metamebmai) can be prompted by God in
order to produce repentance (metanoeo),
as Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 7:10.
But Judas’s remorse was not prompted by God to lead to repentance but
only to guilt and despair.” Let us look
at 2 Cor. 7:10 “10 For the sorrow that is according
to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading
to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.” I have a friend of mine who truly thinks that
Judas is in heaven, but that is not the case as seen in this last
paragraph. Not only is he not in heaven,
but as mentioned in earlier SD’s I believe that there are different places in
hell where the punishment will be worse than others and my belief is that Judas
will be in the “hottest” part of hell, and the reason is because Judas walked
with the very God who created the heavens and the earth and then after walking
with Him for three years betrayed Him so that in the end He died on the
cross. I realize this was in the plans
of God from eternity past, but Judas is still responsible for what he did and
thus will have to pay for his sins.
MacArthur
goes on to write “Because he was a kind of witness against Jesus, perhaps Judas
thought that by admitting the wickedness of what he had done he would be
punished as a false witness, as Deuteronomy 19:16-19 prescribes. Under that provision, he would have been
crucified himself; suffering the penalty imposed on the one he caused to be
falsely convicted. Instead of looking to
Jesus’ for forgiveness and trusting in His atoning death, Judas’s perverted
mind may have led to believe that by dying he somehow could atone for his own
sin.” Now we will look at Deuteronomy
19:16-19 “16 "If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him
of wrongdoing, 17 then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the
LORD, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days. 18 "The judges shall investigate
thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely, 19 then you shall do to him
just as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil
from among you.”
I will quote two more paragraphs from MacArthur’s
commentary which will finish this Spiritual Diary for today.
“Proof
that Judas’s sorrow was ungodly and selfish is seen in the fact that he made no
effort to defend or rescue. He had no
desire to vindicate or save Jesus but only to salve his conscience, which he
attempted to do by returning the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests
and elders.”
“While some of the Jewish religious leaders were
escorting Jesus to Pilate, others remained in the Temple. It was there that Judas confronted them (see.
V. 5) and confessed that he had sinned by betraying innocent blood. Had he been concerned about forgiveness for
his sin and had he really believed on the Lord, he would have approached Jesus,
not the chief priests and elders. He
hoped somehow to assuage his guilt simply by returning the blood money. Like Pilate, who recognized Jesus’ innocence
but nevertheless permitted His death, Judas knew he had betrayed innocent blood,
but he did not come to Christ’s defense or seek His forgiveness.”
7/13/2024 11:21 AM
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