“His Name”

 

MORNING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/6/2026 9:18 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                            Focus:  “His Name”

            I begin this very last section on John MacArthur’s comments on the twelve apostles by looking at the very last apostle, Judas Iscariot.

            He writes “Judas was a common Jewish name (the New Testament records at least eight men with that name), and had no evil connotation before Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of the Lord.  It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name ‘Judah’ (‘praised’).  His father was Simon Iscariot (John 6:71; 13:2, 26); their surname is most likely the Greek translation of a Hebrew phrase that means ‘man of Kerioth.’  The Old Testament lists two villages named Kerioth, one in Moab (Jer. 48:24, 41; Amos 2:2), and another in the extreme southern part of Judah, about fifteen miles south of Hebron (Josh. 15:25).  Judas Iscariot was almost certainly from the latter village, making him the only one of the Twelve who was not a Galilean.  While there is no evidence that the other eleven ostracized him, Judas may have viewed himself as an outsider, which might have helped him to rationalize his detachment and treachery.  That the other eleven knew little of Judas’s background helps explain how he managed to become the group’s treasurer (John 13:29)—a position he took advantage of to embezzle money (John 12:6).

            “By all outward appearances, Judas looked no different from the rest of the apostles.  He did not appear sinister.  The evil that would eventually manifest itself in his betrayal of the Savior lay hidden in the dark recesses of his heart.  Thus when Jesus, on the very night that Judas betrayed Him, told the disciples, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, that one of you will betray Me’ (John 13:21), no one pointed an accusing finger at Judas. On the contrary, ‘the disciples began looking at one another, at a loss to know of which one He was speaking’ (v. 22).  Only Jesus knew Judas’s evil heart from the beginning (John 6:64, 70).

Spiritual Meaning for my Life today:  I have read that those who are in hell will receive different degrees of punishment, depending how they lived their sinful life while on earth.  I have also read that Judas Iscariot will receive the greatest punishment in hell, and I am beginning to understand just how horrible his sin was as after living with Jesus and the other apostles he then would betray the only one who could have saved him.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Continue to pray that my wife will receive great grace from the Lord as she suffers from the cancer she has.

7/6/2026 9:46 AM