Tuesday, December 10th, 2024
ABOUT JUDAS
On my drive to the VA in St. Cloud and back last week, I asked the Holy Spirit to give me another installment of what I call God’s History Lessons. I don’t give Him the subject matter; He gives it to me. And I don’t get a word-for-word “Thus sayeth the Lord,” from Him but more His insights that are deposited as thoughts in my mind that I write out later with my words. The topic on that trip was About Judas.
Why did Jesus choose Judas to be one of His twelve apostles when He knew he would sell Him out for thirty pieces of silver? Jesus would have been arrested in some other way and have fulfilled His mission to be crucified on a cross and resurrected three days later in the flesh. Judas was not crucial to the story of salvation. I asked the Holy Spirit that question, and the history lesson began.
Jesus taught the truths and foundations of the Christian faith often through stories, which we call parables, so His followers and us today would not forget them. After all, who forgets a memorable story? A few examples of these stories in the New Testament are the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the owner of a vineyard, the ten virgins, and the rich young ruler. In the example of Judas, the story is given to us in a real person. He was the son of perdition and would have been lost for eternity even without his famous betrayal.
Here’s the lesson the Holy Spirit imparted to me. Judas was close to Jesus for three years but sold Him out for money (an idol). Then I thought, “How else do His followers sell Him out, keeping in mind that I’m one of His followers?” A list of sell-outs quickly came to mind—money, power, position, a job, drugs, alcohol, wanting to be liked by the world, and all the other ways we say, “I have my rights, it’s all about me, I deserve this, don’t cross me, how dare she do that to me, I will do it my own way, and those people don’t deserve any mercy from me.”
The examples of selling out Jesus were all about what other people do, of course. That thought lasted about ten seconds. Then I realized I also sell out Jesus more often than I’d like to admit. This is not confession time, but I fit into the list in the paragraph above when I am not living in Christ as fully as I should, when I do not put Him above me in this or that situation, when I say I will not follow His command in this instance though I know better, and whenever else I choose to live in the world for a time instead of my true home—His Kingdom here on earth.
As a side note, there are at least four prophecies about Judas in the Old Testament—three in Psalms and one in Zechariah. God knew what was going to happen to His Son, that Judas would play a role, and that He would teach a lesson through the betrayal of one of Jesus chosen twelve.