is Mark 14, 43 to 50. And then we’re gonna add to that a little bit from Matthew, Matthew 27, three to 20, because it gives us a little bit of deeper insight into what’s going on there. So again, Mark 14, 43 to 50, and Matthew 27, three to 20, this is God’s holy word. And immediately while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and the scribes and elders.
Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I will kiss is the man. Seize him and lead him away under guard. And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, Rabbi, and he kissed him. And they laid hands on him and seized him. But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. And Jesus said to them, Have you come out against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But let the Scriptures be fulfilled. and they all left him and fled.
Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. They said, What is that to us? See to it yourself. and throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed and went and hanged himself. But the chief priests taking the pieces of silver said, it is not lawful to put them into the treasury since it is blood money.
So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place by strangers or for strangers. Therefore, that field has been called the field of blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, and they took the 30 pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.
Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus said, you have said so. But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he gave no answer. Then Pilate said to him, do you not hear how many things they testify against you? But he gave no answer, not even a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.
Now at the feast, the governor was customed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, whom do you want me to release to you, Barabbas or Jesus, who is called Christ? For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.
Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus.
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. Thanks be to God. Lord, we pray today that this very serious passage, shocking passage, might yet inform us how we should think upon the Lord Jesus Christ and upon those who are associated with him or contacted with him in those days long by. We pray, Lord, now that you’ll prepare our hearts to receive your word and to understand it and use it.
In Jesus’ name, amen. When I was growing up, if you said something like, I’m convinced the Lakers can beat any other team, someone would reply, well, you just gave that team the kiss of death. Meaning, of course, that they were sure to lose if you were touting their greatness.
It probably has at least some connection in Judas greeting Jesus and the kiss that he gave him in the Garden of Gethsemane so as to identify him to the soldiers who were supposed to arrest Jesus. We’re going to spend some time this morning looking at and listening to the confrontation between Jesus and the mob that had come to find and arrest him. Our first point this morning is this, that if we are Judas, Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here?
There are two rather well-known people who were associated with the assassination of Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius. And as it turned out, they took their own lives. They were not necessarily sorrowful for what they had done, but they saw another way to escape. This was later in the battle of Philippi, or there were two battles actually, and they both took their own lives in that situation.
Well, we see here that when Brutus and the mob that he is leading finally confront Jesus, there’s nothing left to negotiate. Let’s sit down and see if we can make this man surrender to us or if we can hold back the disciples that might try to defend him.
There’s nothing to negotiate here because the deal has been struck and the blood money, as it’s called, had been paid. And so, really, there’s nothing left to collect either. The chief priest did not say, well, you get half now and half when we get Jesus in custody. So there’s nothing left to negotiate and there’s nothing left to collect.
Jesus is to be arrested and Judas has fulfilled his end of the bargain. Jesus is practically in the hands already of the pursuing mob that has come with Judas into the garden. I think I said previously, the garden was a quiet place. It was a place of privacy, where you could get away and feel safe. But that was certainly changed, at least in this moment, as the mob, in effect, really, had Jesus in their custody.
It only remained for them to put the restraints upon him and to take him away to a rather unbiblical, unlawful trial that they had look to have for him at this time. So as I said, all that remains is for Jesus to be tied up and dragged to the chief priests for trial. And Judas, who led them of course, and I wrote here suddenly, maybe it was something that took a little longer, but he has an attack of guilt.
Have you ever had an attack of guilt? You maybe took a piece of candy that you shouldn’t have, it belonged to somebody else, or you didn’t have permission, and then you felt guilty about it. Maybe you tried to put it back, but that wasn’t such a good idea either. You had the chocolate on your fingers, for one thing, and for another, everybody was looking, so it was hard to put the candy back. guilt of Judas was much deeper than that, and of course, much more serious.
Really, he tried to give back the money, but they said, we don’t want it. And he looked at the money and he thought, well, what am I gonna do? So he went to the temple and he just threw it in the temple. clanging on the floor, if you will. And I guess somebody picked it up and put it in the poor box or something like that. And even the chief priest says, wait a minute, that’s blood money.
We’ll have to do something else with it. And they gathered it up and they went and they bought a field. with it. So sometime, obviously, it passed. You don’t carry out a transaction like that very quickly. You have to go in and talk to those who are real estate people, if you will, whatever they had in those days. But anyway, they bought a field with it called the Akadama, the field of blood. And it was a place for really non-Jews to be married, strangers, foreigners to be buried, or even people who are of an unsavory reputation and want to bury those in the regular cemeteries. So they were taken and buried in the field of blood.
Well, if we’re Judas, the question is, where do we go from here? Well, we sadly read that Judas went out and hanged himself. Now, people have some questions because in one place it says that he was hung, and in another place it said he fell down and his body was broken open in the fall. But I think it’s not difficult to perceive what took place. There was a place where there was a cliff or a high defile and maybe a branch that stuck out over it. And Judas tried to hang himself and the rope broke or the branch broke or something and he fell down and his body was mutilated by the fall. But really, when you ask what’s left to do, where do we go from here?
Finally, Judas concluded, I’m just going to take my life. And it was really not a very rational thought. The Jews believed in heaven. They believed in being with God again. There were some, of course, who thought, well, when you die, that’s just the end of it. Maybe that was in Judas’s mind at this point.
But what we can say was that The only place left for him to go really, feeling this heavy burden of guilt and finding that nobody would accept his kind of repentance of throwing the money down or saying, I did something that I shouldn’t have done. I have sinned against innocent blood. Then he finally said, I’m just going to end it all. Just take my life. I don’t want to have to deal with it anymore. Of course, the sad thing about that sort of attitude is life in terms of having to deal with God, having a conscious day of judgment, that’s not eliminated just because you take your own life. But it’s sad, however way you look at it.
If we’re Judas, Well, where do we go from here? Well, Judas says, the only place for me to go is to the hanging tree, to the precipice that will take me away, he hopes, from feeling any more guilt or sorrow about what he did. We can feel sorry for Judas. Maybe we should feel sorry for Judas.
But Jesus had already said it was better, or is better, he said, for that man if he had never been born, never been born. Well, this one who gave the kiss of death really was kissing his own death in a way. That’s what happens when you reject Christ or when you betray Him, turn from Him. You really set up the procedure that will lead to your own destruction. It may not be like a suicide or something like that, but eventually you’re going to come to the judgment of God and to the everlasting wrath and separation from Him. If we’re Judas, where do we go from here?
Think about that. Rudas and Cassius, as we mentioned earlier, they thought, well, the only thing left to do is to take our own lives. We’re defeated in battle. been guilty of assassinating Caesar, and nobody really likes us anymore, and looks like our lives are over with, so let’s just finish it off right there. Well, that’s our first point today. If we’re Judas, or Brutus, or Cassius, or anybody who really has exhausted all hope of victory, and hope, and life, what do you do? You just try to end it all. That brings us to our second point this morning. If we are the disciples, then what does Jesus need from us?
There was a famous preacher some years ago named G. Campbell Morgan. Well, he had some things in his life that maybe, you know, he might have chosen differently. But somebody came up to him and said, Dr. Campbell, he said, God has told me to tell you that you should stop such and such thing. And Dr. Morgan said, Well, thank you, son.
When he tells me I’ll stop. Jesus still needs us, but we have to understand what He doesn’t need from us. He doesn’t need, say, for example, Peter’s pledge. Though everybody flees from you, I’ll stand there, I’ll fight to the death on your behalf. Now, Peter might have done that. I think he was prepared to do that. It says he drew his sword at one point. But that wasn’t what God wanted. God had other plans for Peter.
But just from our point of view, does He need us? to defend Him. Does He need any of us? Can He not get along without us? And I think the Bible says He doesn’t need any of us, but He does want to save us. He does want to have a people for His name. He does want a people who love Him and serve Him and obey Him and will do so forever. And He’s going to accomplish that. He’s going to get that. He doesn’t need the sword as we said Peter drew the sword.
He actually cut off a man’s ear. Now the Lord healed the man right then and there. That should have been a very startling experience for all of them who were looking on. Maybe there was so much confusion they didn’t quite understand what was happening.
But Peter did use the sword. He didn’t just say, look what I’ve got. Man, he was swinging it and he caught somebody with it. The Lord says, I don’t need a sword. Now, there was a place where He told His disciples, He says, you’re going to have to go out into dangerous country. You may face wild animals or robbers even. And it’s good to have a sword with you. There’s nothing wrong with self-defense. He says, when it comes to Me and what I need you to do, I don’t need any swords. At one point he said, I could call for 12 legions of angels and they would be here in a moment to defend me.
I don’t need your sword, Peter. I don’t need your pledge to stay with me to the end, although I’m sure that would have pleased him if he had stayed with him, which he didn’t do. But I don’t need your pledge, I don’t need your sword. I don’t need any aggressiveness on the part of the rest of you guys, the 11 disciples, or however many may have joined them, I don’t know.
But he says, your aggressiveness needs to be redirected. There will be a time when you need to be aggressive for the gospel. You need to go out and to confront some of the highest people in the Roman Empire as well as some of the lowest of them, but you need to go out and aggressively bring the good news to them. God’s not against aggression. He’s just against aggression where it’s for self-preservation or for what you think is a good deed that you’re doing.
The Lord says, I can muster all the help from heaven that I need. But He says, what I want you to do is to be humble in this situation and just to say, Lord, it’s all in Your hands. Now, He does need our listening ears. He does need a realization that God’s plan is being worked out.
What’s God’s plan? Well, God’s plan is to save sinners by the death of his son on the cross. That’s the plan. And how are we going to get Jesus from the garden of Gethsemane to the cross of Calvary? It’s going to follow a pattern that God has arranged.
He’s going to have it in the minds of Jesus’ enemies. He’s going to have these disciples to run and hide. He’s going to take any steps that He feels will get Jesus to the cross, and He will see that that happens, but He doesn’t need our aggressiveness to try to prevent it or to stop it from happening. So, he would be pleased, I’m sure, if all these eleven disciples that were left would have stuck with him all the way. A couple of them did go a ways with him, but most of them, it says, they ran off and hid somewhere.
I’m afraid that’s what we do too often, too. We look for a place to hide. when we need to stand up for Jesus. You know that hymn that we sing sometimes, stand up, stand up for Jesus, you soldiers of the cross, lift high his royal banner, it shall not suffer loss. He needed those who would stand up with him. Not many even made an effort, and one of them that made the effort, couldn’t bring himself to say, I belong to Jesus.
And another sort of disappeared in the palace. This was Peter and John. They sort of disappeared. You don’t hear much about them during the trial or the things. But at least give them credit. They did take a bit of a stand for Jesus. Let’s not run away and hide. The Lord says, take your stand with me. There’s a hymn that we sing about the cross that towers over the wrecks of time. He says, and Paul says, I’m not ashamed of that cross. I’m not ashamed to stand in the wrecks of time with the Lord Jesus Christ, even to identify myself with his death on the cross. Well, we’ve said two things.
If we’re Judas, And what comes next? And Judah said, nothing. I’m going out and kill myself. And the disciples said, well, if we can’t fight, then we’re going to run and hide, which is exactly what they did. Our third point is this. Does repentance look anything like what Judas does next. Some people say that, well, Judas repented. He went and he said, oh, I’ve shed innocent blood. Take your money back. And he said, if I can’t get anybody to stand with me, I’ll just kill myself. What does real repentance look like? in terms of what’s happening, in terms of what Judas does.
Well, first of all, we find that Judas changed his mind, not because he was stricken in his heart that he had hurt the Lord, but he had his own ambitions now not ready to be fulfilled. He felt bad that he had betrayed and he felt bad because Anything that he’d hoped for in life was now going to not carry forward. That’s not real repentance, friends. If you just feel bad because of some situation, even if it has religious connections, it’s not real repentance.
He did make a gesture. What’s the gesture? We threw the silver diamond. We can make all kinds of gestures to show that we feel guilty and we wish this burden of guilt would be lifted off of us, but it’s really not repentance. It’s not what the Bible calls godly sorrow.
And the gesture that he made really was rather meaningless. It didn’t absolve him from anything that took place. He is emotional. You don’t think he’s doing this like Dr. Spock or Mr. Spock on Star Trek, who has no emotions. He’s very emotional about this. He is not, in the Bible’s terms, a truly repentant person, but he just couldn’t throw off this heaviness, and he didn’t know what to do.
You know, if you do feel guilty, and if you do feel this heaviness, is there some way you can deal with that? And the Bible says, of course there is. Repent. Turn from your sins. The word repentance means to turn around, go the other way. You can’t do that without God’s help. But assuming that the Spirit of God works in you, then you want to say, Lord, I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you. I’m sorry for having offended you, for having betrayed you.
You see, Judas was mistaken in thinking that returning the blood money might make the Lord more sympathetic, that God would look down from heaven. And so, say, isn’t that really a nice gesture on Judas’ part? You think God said that? That he said, I’m so glad Judas threw that money back in the temple.
I think the Lord said, I’m still waiting for you to come to me and say, Lord, I know I’ve hurt you. I know I’m so unworthy. All I can do is ask for your mercy. That’s what Peter did later, of course. Peter said, I’m not really worthy of much of anything, Lord, but you know that I love you. What if Judas had gone to the Lord Jesus and said, Lord, I love you. What I did is unspeakable, is something for which I cannot account. Lord, I don’t know what else to do. My eyes are on you. I’m looking to you. Well, what about Judas?
Did he come out of this smelling like a rose or even a sympathetic figure? I think Shakespeare kind of made him a sympathetic figure, at least he made some of these other men like Brutus and Cassius sort of sympathetic figures. But no, I’m afraid that Judas’ shame will follow him. You know what they said about Benedict Arnold, who was a great traitor, of course? They said he’s just like Judas. Just like Judas. When you say Judas to people, even to talk about animals sometimes, a Judas goat that leads other animals to be slaughtered.
Not much glory in that. Not much to like about that. It’s a terrible shame. And for poor Judas, it means that they followed him not only up to the moment that he killed himself, but it just kept on following him in the memories of people, in the narrative of Scripture. It just followed him on down through the ages. Everlasting shame, we might say. Follow him long after he passes from the scene of the crime. Well, let’s make sure our repentance is real repentance. There are lots of people in the Bible that repented.
They got off a lot better than Judas did. But Judas never had that real godly sorrow, that repentance that he needed. One last thing, we have to ask, what is lawful when it comes to passing judgment on Jesus? There’s a verse in Matthew chapter 22 that says, when Jesus said to some of his opponents, he said, you’re wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. Matthew 22, 29. First of all, we need to acknowledge that Jesus is innocent. Now, Judas did that much.
He said, I’ve shed innocent blood. But again, it wasn’t Lord, I love you. Please forgive me. Please deliver me from what’s happened. The Lord Himself said to other people, He said, what think you of Christ? What do you think about Him? I don’t think Judas ever really thought of Christ as the one that God had promised to come and shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins. He just felt bad about the whole thing.
You have to acknowledge Jesus’ innocence, yes. He had no sins of His own, so why was He crucified? Because of our sins. Because of what we did to Him. admitting one’s guilt also, he felt guilty. And he never said, as far as we know, wow, I feel so guilty.
I feel so burdened and broken down by all of this. Lord, won’t you have mercy upon me? Remember that publican, I should say, at the temple, he beat his breast and said, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. Oh, if Judas had just said that to the Lord, do you think the Lord would have said, too late? I don’t think so at all. I think it was said, I’ve been waiting Judas for you to say that for a long time. Lord have mercy upon me, the sinner. Well, We have to also trust His shed blood, not for worldly gain. Why did Judas follow Jesus as long as he did? And why did even some other people follow Jesus as long as they did?
Because they thought they might gain a place. They might be made an important official or have riches or something like that. Well, of course, you’re going to get the riches of heaven, but that’s not what they were thinking about. They were thinking about worldly gain, not about the forgiveness of their sins. Trust His shed blood, yes. Not to make you great or so important, but to wash away your sins.
Yes. And then giving praise to God for the gift of his only begotten son. Lord, thank you. Thank you so much for sending Jesus to die for me. Thank you for sending Jesus to take away my sins. Thank you for sending him to the cross where I should have been nailed and died. Thank you, Lord. Thank you. I think that’s why Jesus would have been thrilled to hear from Judas Iscariot. Lord, I don’t understand everything. But I know this, that without what you’re doing, I would most certainly perish.
Committing to obey Jesus is Lord. That’s what’s lawful. Jesus says, don’t call me Lord unless you’re going to obey Me. Even if you have to give up this world and everything that it promises you, if you just want to obey Me, I’ll give you more than you ever could have imagined. What is lawful when it comes to passing judgment on Jesus?
Accept His innocence. Plead for His mercy. Trust in the shed blood. Thank Him for His Spirit and for the life that He gives you. and obey Him no matter what the temptations to do otherwise. So I hope you see a little bit in this kiss of death business. If we’re Judas, what are we going to do from here? There’s only one thing to do other than kill yourself, and that is to ask the Lord for His mercy. If we’re His disciples, what does Jesus need from us? He needs us to stand up for Him and not run away and hide.
Does repentance look anything like what Judas does? Not a bit. Unless we are truly, deeply, emotionally down to the depths of our being sorrowful for what we have done. Because it’s Him. Because what we have done It’s an offense against Him, and to commit ourselves to the Lord. That’s what’s lawful. That’s what we ought to do. That’s what He calls us to do today. Let’s pray. Father in Heaven, we thank You for this lesson from Judas. We’re sorry that it was he. We’re sorry, Lord, that there’s not any more good news about him. There’s not even much good news about the disciples.
But Lord, in our case, we come as those who are unworthy even of the least of Your mercies, and yet You’ve offered to forgive us and take us to heaven and give us life, and we earnestly plead for that. We pray, Lord, always to acknowledge that You were sent not to pay for Your own sins, but to pay for our sins. Help us to keep that always in mind. In Jesus’ name, Amen.