Sermons From Enemies – I Have Betrayed Innocent Blood is the third in our series for Lent. We’ve heard from the Pilate’s wife, and Sanhedrin. This Sunday we jumped into the pit with Judas.
What did Judas think was going to happen when he agreed to betray his Lord for thirty silver coins? John’s Gospel says Judas “was a thief” (Jn 12:6), and that fact provides the most likely explanation for what he did. Judas had seen Jesus in danger on other occasions, and he had seen how Jesus always mastered those harrowing situations. No one could lay a hand on Jesus if Jesus didn’t allow it. Judas maybe thought, Jesus can do that again. He can be surrounded by his enemies again, and then he can overpower them and get free again – make them go blind, freeze them in their tracks, cause them to shrivel up and die, who knows? And why shouldn’t I be the richer for it? He can go free. I can make some money. Everyone can be happy.
But Judas saw early that Friday morning that it wasn’t going to turn out that way. Instead, he saw Jesus tried and condemned, taken to Pilate, and soon to be crucified. When Judas … saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse.” Matthew doesn’t actually say Judas was sorry, and Matthew clearly did not use the very Christian word repent. Judas did not repent.
He did feel a terrible remorse welling up inside him. For the first time he was gripped by the eye-opening view of exactly how bad this thing was he’d done. He was afraid of what would happen to him. He was experiencing that gnawing sensation you feel when you have been getting away with something – whether it’s been for the last two minutes or the last two decades – but then you get caught and you’d give anything, anything, to turn back the clock, to have those last two minutes or those wo decades to live over again. But you can’t. It’s too late. And the grim truth of it is like a knife at your heart.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from Matthew 27 – Sermons From Enemies – I Have Betrayed Innocent Blood.
Book(s): Matthew
Series: Sermons From Enemies
Tag(s): Lent
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg