Lesson 09.2 - Jesus and Traitors

Introduction

  1. Welcome back to our next look at Jesus and who he is.  Last week, we looked at how Jesus handled people with doubts, and discovered that he dealt with a lot of different people who had doubts.
  2. He wasn’t intimidated by the doubts and he wasn’t angry about them - he simply received them, mercifully and graciously.  He didn’t slap people upside the head for having doubts about him or what he was doing.  He wanted to hear from them.
  3. But then he didn’t leave people in their doubts - he moved them to a place of belief.
    1. So with John the Baptist, Jesus confirmed the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah on the spot by fulfilling them.
    2. With Thomas, he walked over to him and offered to let him look at Jesus’ hands and side to confirm his doubts.
    3. And with the guys walking on the road to the town of Emmaus, Jesus walked them through Scripture to confirm who he was, confirming everything for them.
  4. So for us, Jesus always wants us to bring our feelings to him, and then he wants to help us get from doubt to real faith and reliance on who he is.
  5. We’re seeing through this study so far that there is a common theme about Jesus - he’s ready to welcome people no matter their past, as long as they are coming to him.
    1. Once they get there, then he begins the work of changing them.
    2. It’s really a silly idea to think we can get ourselves “cleaned up” before coming to Jesus - that’s the work he does when we come to him.
      1. It’s like a two-year old thinking he can clean up his spilled yogurt before his parents get there - it just ain’t happening.  The parents have to clean it up.
      2. (We’ve been keeping a two-year old this weekend for some friends, so this is very real to me all of a sudden!)
    3. He doesn’t leave us where we are, but we always have to remember that like salvation, the process of becoming more like Jesus is the work he’s doing in our hearts.
    4. We should never try to get cleaned up before coming to Jesus - he wants us right as we are.


Traitors

  1. This week we want to look at a group of people that I’ve never really given much thought to in the Bible.  Or really we’re going to look at one guy Jesus dealt with in particular.
  2. When I ask who the biggest traitor is in history, I think even people who didn’t know anything about the Bible would probably be including Judas Iscariot in that list.
    1. Judas is one of those guys who has been forever identified with being a traitor.
    2. So just about everyone knows Judas was a traitor, even if they don’t know anything else about the Bible or even about Jesus.
  3. But first, in order to look at this right, we need to clarify what exactly is a traitor?
    1. I looked this up in the dictionary (which, just to clarify, doesn’t mean I picked up a physical dictionary - it means I went to dictionary.com and punched this in) and found these definitions:
      1. A person who betrays another, a cause, or any trust.
      2. A person who commits treason by betraying his or her country.
    2. Betrayal is something I think we all recognize, but what is it exactly?
      1. It can encompass a lot of things - like being unfaithful in something we’re supposed to do - but at the root, it’s an exposure of something that we really don’t want people to know about us.
      2. That could be that we’re being sneaky and working against our team and we want people to think we’re honest.
      3. That could be that we’re not what someone expected of us - they expected us to be trustworthy, loyal, and faithful and instead we’re cheating and disloyal.
    3. So betraying someone’s trust or a particular cause is what makes you a traitor under the dictionary definition.
      1. I’m sure we’ve all felt that from friends at one point or another.
  4. But what exactly does being a traitor look like?
    1. We’ve been given a perfect example of a traitor in the U.S. right now.  In fact, if you asked most people who the biggest traitor is at the moment, I’m betting most people would say LeBron James.
    2. Even if you don’t follow sports, you’ve probably heard something about LeBron recently.
    3. Now just to let you know, I’m not an NBA guy - I like college basketball during March Madness, but that’s about it.  I’m much more like to do college football (as y’all will get tired of hearing about in the fall) - but I learned the story of LeBron recently.
      1. Ironically enough, just like Michael Jordan was known as “Air Jordan,” LeBron James is known as “King James.”  It would only be funnier in the church context if his jersey number was “1611.”
    4. Here’s the story on LeBron, which I know is accurate because I got straight from Wikipedia:
      1. LeBron was born in Ohio, and won all kinds of awards while he was in high school.  He was known all through Ohio, won three state “Mr. Basketball” awards and was a media star by the time he graduated from high school at 18.
      2. At 18, he was selected in the NBA draft as the number one overall pick by his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers (in Ohio).
      3. This guy signed a $90 million shoe contract with Nike before he even played professionally, and won Rookie of the Year, MVP, all kinds of awards during his time.
      4. He was the hometown guy.  Everyone in Cleveland loved him, and he was the hometown hero.  He continually insisted he would be playing for his home team, how much he loved Cleveland, and how that’s why he always wanted to stay here.
      5. He was such a hometown guy that a huge controvery erupted when he wore a Yankees hat to a Cleveland Indians game - people were concerned about his loyalty to Cleveland.
      6. But just a couple of weeks ago, he started waffling about whether he would re-sign with his home town team in Cleveland.
    5. Then LeBron announced he was going to hold an hourlong ESPN special broadcast to announce his decision.
      1. And when he did, about 30 minutes into the show, he announced he was going to leave his home state of Ohio and go play for the Miami Heat in Florida.
    6. The fans in Cleveland went crazy.
      1. Within minutes, TV coverage showed LeBron jerseys were being burned in the streets of Cleveland.
      2. The owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers wrote an angry letter he released to the public, accusing LeBron of giving up during the playoffs.
      3. Nike almost immediately began removing the 10-story tall banner of LeBron that had overlooked downtown Cleveland since his career with the Cavaliers began.
      4. His jerseys were dropped to $29.99 and then 75% off that at most sporting good stores in Cleveland.
      5. One online retailer dropped the price of LeBron decals from $99.99 to $17.41, which just happens to be the year that Benedict Arnold was born.
    7. LeBron went from being hometown hero to being villain in just a few minutes.
    8. And the reason why?  Because people considered him to be a traitor - he had turned against his hometown team and state and city and went with money and fame instead.
      1. He had sold out.  He had revealed he wasn’t loyal - instead he was a traitor.
  5. Or we just had another example in the Russian spies that were arrested in New York.
    1. They appeared to be loyal American citizens living as American families, but in reality were sending state secrets and information to Russia.
    2. They had been here for years trying to blend in as Americans, but then we found out that’s not what they were - they were actually trying to infiltrate our security and send information back to Russia.
    3. They weren’t loyal to America, they were traitors.
    4. Just like Benedict Arnold, the famous Revolutionary War traitor, they were revealing that they weren’t loyal, but actually were trying to hurt the very country they were living in.
  6. We could go on and on with these kinds of examples - if you turn to art, most movies will have some type of figure who is the traitor - they’re the person or group you think is with the hero, then you discovery isn’t, whether it’s Robert the Bruce in Braveheart or the cook in Ratatouille.
    1. There’s that pang of initial guilt of trusting this person, then anger at what they’ve done.
    2. How could they sell out the hero?  How could they sell out their country?  How could they make things so terrible for everyone?
    3. How could they stab you in the back like that?
      1. Then you have this wonderful sense of justice when the traitor gets what’s coming - when he’s run through with the sword or realizes the error of his ways and comes back repentant.
    4. We all know being a traitor is a terrible thing.  And we all hate traitors.


Jesus and Judas
  1. So that’s what a traitor is - it’s a person we all can easily recognize once their real colors are shown.  And all of us want to get what’s coming to him or her.
  2. The English word for traitor actually originates with the most famous traitor in history, though, Judas Iscariot.
  3. That’s who we want to look at this morning - to understand who Judas was, and how Jesus dealt with him.
  4. In order to think accurately about Judas, though, we have to remember who Jesus was.
    1. Remember, Jesus is God in human flesh.  He has known everything from before the time he created the world.
    2. So Jesus knew before he even made the sun and moon that Judas was going to be the one to betray him.
      1. He’s the one who allowed Judas to even exist, who held the atoms in Judas’ body together, and who knew exactly what Judas was thinking.
    3. But Jesus is also the one who chose Judas out of the group of his followers to be one of the Twelve, one of those with a close relationship to Jesus.
  1. Every time I’ve ever seen Judas portrayed, he always is the most evil-looking guy possible, darting around, hiding, always looking very, very guilty.
    1. The assumption always is that when Jesus said that one of the Twelve would betray him, everyone turned and looked at Judas.
      1. It’s not like they all had their money on Judas being the one to betray Jesus.
    2. But instead everyone was looking at each other going who in the world is he talking about?  They were all close enough that none of them imagined it was the other.
    3. And even more than that, Judas was the treasurer of the group.
      1. You don’t lightly choose who is going to be in charge of the money for your group, whatever group that is.
      2. You generally take the most trustworthy person that can do math as the person to keep the books and records.
      3. And in the group of the disciples, that person was Judas - he was the trustworthy one that they allowed to keep the money because they thought he was trustworthy.
  2. So when we think about Judas, we’ve got to remember he wasn’t a sneaky, Gollum-type character, who you’re just waiting to kill you in your sleep.  He was thought to be a trustworthy guy who everyone in the group of disciples respected, and whom no one thought of when Jesus said that one of them was going to betray him..
  3. There aren’t a whole lot of stories about Judas in the New Testament.  We’ll take a look at a few of them and think about this issue of Jesus with the traitors.
  4. One of the few stories that exists in the Gospels about Judas besides the story of the betrayal (which we’ll look at momentarily) involves Judas’ reaction to when Mary anointed Jesus feet with very expensive perfume.
    1. Let’s look at John 12:1-8: “Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.  Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, [basically very expensive perfume] and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.
      1. So just imagine the scene - this woman who loves Jesus very much is anointing his feet and the smell of this perfume is filling up the house.
      2. This pound of ointment is about half a liter - or a 20 ounce bottle of this perfume - that’s quite a bit of perfume to use all at once!
      3. Instead of seeing the beauty of the situation, all Judas can see is the uselessness of this extravagance:
    2. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence [three hundred pence was 300 days wages, or an entire year’s salary for the average worker], and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag [was the treasurer], and bare [stole] what was put therein.
    3. Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.
  5. So what do we learn about Judas from this incident?  Well, like we said a few minutes ago, we learn his position as the treasurer of the disciples.  We also learn that he was focused almost exclusively on the money side of things, but not for a pure motive, but because he wanted to get in on the action of the money.
    1. Apparently even before the betrayal, Judas was into following Jesus for the money.
    2. But remember, Jesus knew Judas’ heart just like he knew everyone else’s heart.
      1. Pastor has been teaching about God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility on Sunday nights, and I don’t want to delve into that topic here, but I almost wonder if Jesus was giving Judas every opportunity to see what Judas would choose, because Judas definitely had a free choice here.
      2. It wasn’t a surprise to Jesus when he was betrayed, but it was sad to him - because one of his trusted friends had turned on him.
      3. Judas had a choice, he wasn’t forced to betray Jesus, but he chose to.
  6. The second story we have about Judas relates directly to the process of the betrayal.  It’s in Luke 22:1-6 - we’re told that it was getting close to the Passover, and picking up in verse two: “And the chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him [Jesus]; for they feared the people.
    1. These dudes were scared of the people, and they were trying to find out a good way to track down where Jesus was so they could arrest him without a public scene.
    2. The account continues, “Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve” [remember, we’re told elsewhere in the Bible that Judas was never a believer in Jesus, so his heart had never been changed].
    3. “And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money. And he promised, and sought opportunity to betray him unto them in the absence of the multitude. “
  7. So the chief priests found their way into Jesus’ inner circle, someone who knew exactly what his movements were and exactly where he would be.
    1. It’s as if we were able to break into Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, someone who was with him and knew where he would be at all times so that we could take him out with a Predator drone.
    2. This was valuable info to the priests, because now they knew how they could capture Jesus.
  8. Let’s drop down to verse 47 and 48 in Luke 22 and pick up the account: “And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them, and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”
    1. This is such a sad scene, because it’s confirmation - Judas is betraying Jesus with the sign that a student would use to greet his teacher in those days, a sign of respect.  Instead of respect, Judas is using the kiss as a way to identify Jesus in the darkness so he can be arrested, and eventually crucified.
    2. Ironically, Judas was apparently wracked with remorse over this, because Matthew’s account tells us that after Jesus was arrested, Judas tried to give the money back to the priests.
      1. Matthew 27:4 tells us Judas said he sinned by betraying innocent blood. They didn’t care at all, and just told him he should have thought about that.
      2. Judas threw down the money and ran out of the temple, and met a terrible death by hanging himself.
  9. Judas met a terrible end, and yet some people almost seem to celebrate the justice that was done - he betrayed the Son of God, and he got what was coming to him.
    1. Instead, let’s carry this a little farther - because remember, this was all part of God’s plan when he was dealing with another group of traitors.


Jesus and Other Traitors
  1. The story of Jesus isn’t the only story in the Bible about Jesus dealing with people who betrayed him.
    1. Remember that the Bible is a story of epic redemption - from start to finish, it’s about what God is doing to restore back to himself the things that were fractured and destroyed by sin.
    2. Sin was the ultimate rebellion against God - when Adam and Eve disobeyed the only commandment that God had given them, the one rule they had to follow in the Garden of Eden, they were rebelling against God.
      1. They only had one rule - everything else they were free to do in the Garden, just don’t eat from one tree.
      2. So when Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they were saying, God, even though we’re just things you’ve made, we think we know better how things should work.  We’ve got this thing figured out, and we really don’t need your input, thank you very much.
    3. Ever since then, human beings have had to live with the effects of sin - with the effects of us telling God that we think we have a better way than his way.
  2. So today, we see that all kinds of ways
    1. We see that in people saying we think we know a better way to have a family - we’re going to redefine it to include all kinds of groups of people instead of one man with one woman.
    2. Or people who think they have a better way to deal with sexual relationships - why limit them to marriage?  And so our culture embraces this idea that there’s really no consequences, and you should just have a good time.
    3. Or people think they’ve found the answer to life in money or in drugs.  They pursue it with everything they have, and tell God that meth or money will make life better.
  3. But the problem with trying all of these things is that there are always terrible consequences - when you go against God’s design for anything in life, there are going to be consequences.
    1. Whether those are diseases or prison or broken families or loss of hope when the market crashes, trying to follow our own way always leads to devastation.
  4. We all know that - that’s what we’ve heard in church our whole lives.
    1. But have we ever really stopped to consider that our sin, the things we do every day that are saying to God, “I have a better way than what you said,” are actually being traitorous to him?
    2. We’re throwing aside our loyalty to the God of the universe and instead carving our own way.
      1. Just like the Russian spies - we’re not loyal to the U.S.  Or LeBron not being loyal to Ohio.  Or Benedict Arnold trying to destroy his country.
      2. Or Judas betraying his Lord.
    3. Our sin is actually treason against God.  That’s staggering, especially when we can so quickly and easily judge Judas for what he did.
  5. So how does Jesus deal with us, as the modern-day traitors against him and his rightful rule and kingdom?
    1. Romans 5:8 tells us that while we were still sinners, or we could read that while we were still traitors against God, Jesus died for us.
    2. In the middle of the traitors that we all are, and still are, Jesus came to rescue us from that.
    3. It’s amazing when you think about it, because we all love to see traitors gets justice, not to see them get mercy.
      1. Instead of letting us receive what we deserve, or justice for us as traitors, God instead provides a way for us to be reconciled.
  6. Then what happens when we accept Jesus as our Savior is a great exchange.
    1. Jesus lived a life that was perfectly loyal to God - he never committed a sin, so he never had any rebellion or treason against God while he lived.
    2. And then, when we accept him, he exchanges our betrayal for his loyalty.
    3. So when God sees us, he no longer sees us as traitors, but instead put all of that betrayal on Jesus, and instead see us as perfectly loyal, because we stand in Jesus’ loyalty.
  7. A lot of times, it’s easy to remember that Jesus righteousness is exchanged for our sinfulness.
    1. But maybe it can be a new way to think about it as Jesus’ loyalty exchanged for our treason.
    2. We can never reach the point where we are able to live loyally to God in our own effort - if we were, then we just have the rebellion of self-righteousness happening.
      1. When we remember that we stand in the loyalty of Jesus, not our own loyalty, it can help us see things rightly when we’re dealing with temptation.
  8. And when we meet other traitors - people who are living in rebellion against God - we can relate to them as fellow rebels.
    1. We all are in need of Jesus’ loyalty to be applied to our account.
    2. And just like Jesus became the traitor on our behalf and we became the loyal one, he can do the same for them - just with the grace of God.
  9. Instead of an attitude of judgment, we can help them see the way God has made for them to become loyal subjects to God, to obey what He has designed for the world to function.
  10. And when we’re tempted to go against God’s design for something, think before you act.  Remember that he’s the one who designed the world, and so he knows how it’s supposed to function.
  11. And then we can live in gratitude for the Lord who loves even traitors, and desires to draw us close to himself as his most loyal servants.
  12. Let’s talk about this some more:
    1. View of traitors - are you usually happy to see them get what they deserve?
    2. General view of sin - just as dirty, as disloyalty?  Does it help to think about it differently?
    3. How can we think differently about the people in the world around us in light of all of this?
    4. Does it change how we minister to people?
  13. Next week we’re going to look at how Jesus dealt with another group of people - the religious people of the day.  Should be interesting.