Judas Iscariot: the Man, the Mistake, & the Message
Hello,
everyone! Fellow Americans, I hope you
had a wonderful Thanksgiving, spending time with friends and family, and to my
international readers, I hope you had a beautiful day of thanksgiving!
I
know many of you have been anticipating this post, so I’m pleased to announce
that this is the first in our Judas Iscariot series as we study a few aspects
of this man, his mistake, and the message it holds for each of us. True, a holiday post series would probably be
more appropriate for this time of the season, but since I always do things
different anyways, we’re going to go ahead and try to squeeze this series in
before Christmas.
All
right, now we all probably have some basic understanding of who Judas Iscariot
was, but since it’s so important that we’re all on the same page, let’s begin
our study with a quick recap of what the Bible tells us about this guy. We know he was one of the twelve disciples,
and although the Bible doesn’t tell us what his occupation was before he became
a disciple, we do know that he was in charge of the money bag of the
group. If he was chosen as the
treasurer, he obviously knew how to handle money, so we can take a guess that
maybe he used to be the equivalent to a modern-day accountant or banker. Unfortunately, we don’t know if Judas was
married and had a family of his own or not.
Throughout the course of the Gospels, Judas actually isn’t really
mentioned much, but at the end of each as the time of Jesus’ arrest and
crucifixion approaches, this man comes to light in a very significant- but not
exactly favorable- role.
All throughout
Jesus’ ministry here on earth, the chief priests and elders of the church never
really liked Him. In any good story, the
bad guys and the good guys are always at odds, and in this story, they had long
been scheming how to arrest Jesus and kill Him.
So after Mary, Lazarus’s sister, had anointed Jesus’ feet at Bethany,
Judas went to the chief priests and agreed to betray Jesus and turn Him over to
them for the reward of thirty silver coins.
During the Last Supper, Judas played off his back-stabbing plan pretty
well for it brewing just under the surface.
The other disciples didn’t even suspect a thing, he faked it off so
well… but Jesus knew. Judas left the
supper and went to the chief priests, and the group later barged in on Jesus and
the other disciples as they were praying in the garden of Gethsemane. With a kiss of greeting to Jesus, Judas secretly
indicated to the crowd that the man standing before him was Jesus, the one to
be apprehended. The story goes on, and
Jesus was arrested and taken away to undergo an obstacle course of judicial
trials and physical torment before He paid the ultimate sacrifice in His death
on the cross. In the meantime, Judas
watched as Jesus was bound and taken to Governor Pilate and “when Judas, who
had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse.”
(Mt 27:3) Judas goes down to the temple
and tries to make things right again and reverse his actions by returning the
reward money. But it’s too late. The damage had already been wrought. The chief priests and elders told him,
“That’s your responsibility.” Judas
threw the reward money into the temple anyways and left. The last we see of Judas is his tragic death
when he hangs himself.
From this recap,
I think we can all agree that Jesus is the hero of the story and that Judas is
one of the villains. To put it another
way, Judas is the guy with the black hat that ends up turning on the rest of
the group and shooting the Boss in the back.
But if we all think of him as being such a rotten guy for betraying
Jesus, why am I devoting a whole series of posts to studying him then? Well, because we all have a little Judas in
us at some time or another. You may
protest, “I’m not a traitor!” but in reality, Judas’s faults aren’t so very
different from our own.
I’ve never liked
Judas’s part in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Even as a little girl, his story always made
me sad. I always felt sorry for him in a way. But as I was doing some research for this
series, I realized that my sentiments and opinions aren’t shared by
everyone. In fact, Judas Iscariot is
actually a fairly controversial figure, I learned. You may not agree with my opinions on
everything concerning Judas, but that’s perfectly all right. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. But if you do have a different
perspective, please feel free to leave me a comment and share your opinion with
me and the other readers here. I’d love
to hear your take on the subject! Additionally,
as a disclaimer, I’m no expert on Bible history, so if you’re a Bible scholar and
you find that any of my facts are wrong, please let me know so I can include a
correction in my following posts.
As you might
have guessed, this was just an introductory post to the series. Next time we’ll get into the heart of the
lessons, but this time, I wanted to sum up for you what we know from the Bible
about Judas because we’re going to be taking these details one at a time in the
upcoming posts and it’s important that we keep in mind the basics of what we’re
told about him. I’m so excited about sharing
with you all what the Lord’s revealed to me through this man’s life. Good stuff that I don’t think you’ll want to
miss. I hope you’ll check back in and join
me on this journey.
~We’ve all heard
of the phrase “pulling on her/ his heartstrings,” but heart-chords? I was struggling to decide what to name my
blog. I wanted it to be a name that was
both creative and meaningful. As I
pondered, my gaze fell upon my acoustic guitar where it stands in my bedroom,
and the Lord reminded me that our hearts- our lives- are instruments. They are constantly in song, but what melody
our heart plays is each of our own decisions.
They can play a melody for praise or for entertainment. A musician selects his songs according to his
audience. So do we. Whether our audience is the world or the
Lord, our song will be different. This
blog is designed to first, increase my awareness in finding God and His
guidance in my every day and second, to share the music lessons He teaches me
in tuning my heart to learn the chords of praise He longs to play on my
heart-instrument. Music is a powerful
tool. Use it for His glory. “He
put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in
the Lord.” Psalm 40:3
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