History's Greatest Traitor

Judas Iscariot and the Betrayal of Jesus

Turn with me to the Gospel of Mark, and we're going to be looking tonight at Mark 14, verses 10 -21. Now, if you were here last week, you remember we actually looked at verses 10 and 11 last week, but I want to tie verses 10 and 11 to what comes immediately after.

And this is a very familiar text to us, but I hope to draw some things out tonight that maybe we have not thought of, and particularly, I want to point to a theological truth that is sometimes very difficult, because we're going to look at the subject of man's free will and the subject of God choosing to do something in the life of someone or choosing someone for a purpose.

So when we get to the lesson, you'll hear more of what I'm trying to say with that, but before we do that, let's read the text. This is beginning at verse 10. It says, Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.

When they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money, and he sought an opportunity to betray him. And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?

And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. And wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, The teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

And he will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. There prepare for us. And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

And when it was evening, he came with the twelve, and as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating.

With me.

They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, Is it I? He said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with.

Me.

For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him. But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born. Father, I thank you for your word.

Pray even now, Lord, that as I preach, that you would keep me from error. Lord, help us to be honest with the text tonight, to be fair, to be discerning, and to seek to draw from it what it teaches us.

I pray this in Christ's name, Amen. This, of course, is the text regarding the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. History is filled with famous traitors. Probably one of the most famous traitors is Marcus Junius Brutus, who was, of course, immortalized in the phrase, Et tu, Brute?

Which you guys know what that means? And you also. You too. I remember I had an English teacher in school. He would really emphasize,. And you too, Brutus? Like he would do this little play acting. But that was what Caesar was saying.

You as well will stab me in the back. And so Brutus becomes the, as it were, sort of the model traitor. But there are others down through the ages. Benedict Arnold, of course, I'll never forget. And how silly things, as my mind works, I remember an episode of the Brady Bunch, where Peter was excited because he had a part in the school play.

But then he found out that the part that he had was Benedict Arnold. And every time he told people that he was playing Benedict Arnold, they would say, Traitor!

And run away.

This is, of course, 70s TV for you. Just so silly. But that was the way people think when they think of Benedict Arnold. They think of him as, because of his works with the British in the Revolutionary War, that they just think, they hear the name, and that's what you call someone.

With somebody who is a traitor, you call them a Benedict Arnold. You call them a Brutus. Or you call them a Judas. No more nefarious traitor exists in all of human history, in fiction or in non-fiction, than the person of Judas Iscariot.

And, as we noted last week, when we began Mark chapter 14, we noted that the scribes and the chief priests were looking for a way to put Jesus to death. They were looking for a way to destroy him. That's what the text says.

To how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, is what verse 1 says in the ESV. Well, now they get their opportunity. Judas Iscariot. It's interesting that the Bible puts his name as Judas Iscariot, because we know there was another Judas in the Twelve, and with him it usually just says Judas NOT Iscariot.

Well, I like to differentiate. Not the bad guy. This is the bad guy. And so, in verse 10, as it says,. Then Judas, who was one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. He did it with this purpose.

Now, over the years I have heard some very creative interpretations for Judas' motives. I'll never forget, I think I was the associate pastor at the time. I think Daryl was still here, so we're looking at 2006, 2007, somewhere around in there.

No, no, 2005. I was pastor in 2006. So 2005, 2004, something like that. But we had our Seder supper, and after the Seder supper there was the preaching, which was our tradition, and we had preached on the subject of Judas' betrayal, as it happened that night, right?

So it just went along with what we were doing. And a man who was a guest, he'd never been before and has never been since, came up to me and said, hey, listen, Judas did what Jesus told him to do. Judas' betrayal was planned by Jesus.

He planned the whole thing because he knew he needed to go to the cross. So Judas was really the hero of the story. And I just, kind of like Mike, you know, he shakes his Bible and never falls out, right?

He talked about that the other night. Like I said, you ain't getting that from here. I said, now that's a creative interpretation of Judas. You ever heard anybody say that, Andy? Anybody ever try to make Judas out to be the hero?

No, he's the winner.

Yeah, that's the most creative interpretation I've heard. I have heard people try to eliminate Judas' guilt because of God's sovereignty. And we're going to talk about that in a little while. We're going to talk about how God is sovereign, and yet we're still responsible.

Well, that's the part I said later when we were going to dig into some theology here. But we cannot for a moment think that this was done in a righteous way. Because it clearly says in this text that his purpose was to betray him.

If he was doing what Jesus asked him to do, then it wouldn't be a betrayal. It wouldn't be a betrayal if he's following orders. So the text is clear. What he is doing, he is doing because he wants to betray Jesus.

Now comes the question as to why. And again, this can go back to the question of motive. I've heard some people say, Judas just felt Jesus needed the nudge. Again, I don't know why people are fascinated with trying to take the sting out of sin, but people do, right?

Just like today, anytime somebody's in any kind of sin, we try, well, you know, maybe there's this reason or that reason or whatever. And we try to sympathize with the villain. In fact, think about how many movies do that now, where the villain gets his own sympathy story.

And now we know why he did it, because of X, Y, and Z, right? The villain is the, yeah, the Joker movie. Thank you, that's a good example, right? Well, why was he the way he was? Well, because society is so bad and it turned him into that evil person, right?

Good example. Well, there are those who would say, well, Judas wasn't really betraying Jesus. He was simply just trying, he knew Jesus needed to move forward. And the only way to move forward was to do this act of betrayal.

There's nothing in the text that would indicate that Judas had any righteous motivation. His motivation is selfish. I think his, I will say this, I'll give you my, if you want, my pop psychology for a moment.

I think he's disillusioned with Jesus's ministry, because he's not getting what he thinks it was supposed to be. So that's my 50 cents worth of pop psychology. I think he's looking at Jesus and he didn't get what he expected.

Maybe when he saw Jesus go into the temple and run out the money changers, maybe there was a sense in which he thought, well, this might change, something might change. But then he goes right back out to Bethany and nothing's changed.

Maybe that's it. Maybe he's angry. We talked about him with the ointment and the money that he wanted to take for himself. But even that story tells us, it tells us he wanted the money for himself. So he had been a scoundrel the whole time.

He had been stealing the whole time. It's not as if we can say, there was this gleaming light of hope. It just says he was a thief the whole time. So as we read verses 10 and 11, we see Judas doing what he did, going to the chief priests.

His purpose is said in verse 10, in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad, they were happy. Cuz again, verses 1 and 2, they're asking, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna get this done?

How are we gonna do it without causing an entire riot? Cuz if they would have just went and grabbed Jesus when they knew where he was, if they would have just went out in the middle of the street where Jesus is preaching, he's got all these people that he's healing and doing these different things, it would have caused an uproar.

No, now we can find him in secret. Now we've got a spy, so they're happy. And as I said, if you read Matthew's account of the same story, Matthew 26, 14 to 16, you'll also pick up on his motivation, Judas' motivation, what will you give me?

That's something we don't see here, but we see that in Matthew's parallel account. And what did they give him? 30 pieces of silver, the price of a slave. All right, so we get that in verse 11, it says they sought an opportunity to betray him, now comes the first day of unleavened bread, when the sacrifice of the Passover lamb took place.

Now I have read various accounts of how this actually happened and how the Passover lambs, there were so many of them being slaughtered and so much blood that was coming down that the Kidron Brook, which was there in the Kidron Valley outside of Jerusalem, ran red with the blood of the sacrifices.

So this was not a easy thing. The Passover, time of Passover, Jews would come into Jerusalem and they would come with their families, and you're looking at probably over a million people in the city of Jerusalem.

I looked just last week because I was looking for something else, and the current population of Jacksonville, Florida, is right at a million. It's 990 ,000 people. So that many people in the very small area of Jerusalem.

This is kind of what, going back to Mike's lesson from the conference, kind of what makes you think about, because those people were trapped. And in AD 70, when it was destroyed, those people, many of them had been trapped for a long time there.

And so this, going back to the time of Christ, we're looking at this large group of people that are there. How they had enough lambs, how they had enough places to do this,.

It boggles the mind.

But this is where it's at, and this is what they're doing. It says, his disciples said to him, where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover? This is the first time in Mark's gospel we see them eating the Passover.

In fact, if we only had Mark's gospel to go over, it would seem as if Jesus hadn't been to Jerusalem. But in John's gospel, we see that he has been to Jerusalem before, probably has had this meal with his disciples in Jerusalem before.

This is probably not the first time. John's gospel gives us more of a three year overview of Jesus's ministry. And if you look at Mark and Matthew and Luke, you really only get about a year worth of material as far as time.

So people say Jesus's three year ministry, where do we get that? It's from John, cuz we have annual events happening more than once. So they're probably asking this question, knowing that there's a plan because they've done it before.

They've got a plan, they've been there before, been there, done that, as it were. So it says, and he sent two of his disciples and said to them, go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

Now, there is, what, go ahead.

Is the man carrying water?

I was gonna mention that, but that's right. It's abnormal to see a man carrying water. The people who carried water at that time typically were women, unless they were slaves. There were slaves that carried water.

So if this was a man who was a slave, that could be the case. One person even argued that it could be one of the Essenes, because there were no women in the Essene community. The Essenes were in a different area.

They were down near Qumran, which is near the Dead Sea. I think that might be a bit of a stretch, but it's all possible, right? It is interesting, though, as you noted. To see a man carrying water is unique in this situation.

So one of the questions that often comes up about this is the question of, well, how did Jesus know? And not from the question of omnipotence or God, him knowing everything, omniscience, rather, and knowing everything, but the question of, did Jesus plan this, or did Jesus providentially just know there was gonna be a guy carrying a bottle or a jar of water and say, hey, that's the guy?

I did hear an interesting interpretation of that, and I thought I would share it with you. And that is, there is a good chance that this was pre-planned, and here's the reasoning. The disciples didn't know what was going to happen, but Jesus had a pretty good reason for keeping them in the dark, because Judas is looking for an opportunity to betray him, and Jesus doesn't want the meal interrupted.

So they don't know where they're going until it's time. So Jesus could have planned this before and not told them until the day of, right? It kind of goes back to the same, what's a similar story? I'll ask this as a question.

What's a similar story to this that we just studied recently?

What, what, did you?

Well, the story of Jesus and the donkey. Remember, it's the same thing. Go, you'll find a donkey tied, tell them, and the question comes up, oh, did Jesus plan that before? Did he tell the people that they're coming to get the donkey?

And when they said the master has need of it, did they know what that was because Jesus had already pre-planned it? Or was this a providential act of God? The text doesn't, the text is somewhat ambiguous.

It's not saying, and God providentially ensured that this was the right man for the right thing or something like that. So I don't think we should read into the text something that's not there. And so when we can say we don't know, I think we can say we don't know for certain.

Did Jesus plan this beforehand or was this an act of his providential foresight?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I mean, you're welcome to your opinion on that. And I think what's most important is that once they get there, there is this, it's prepared for them to have this final meal. None of them know this is the last supper.

I stress this a lot. I preach John 14 a lot. In fact, yesterday's funeral was the first time I hadn't preached John 14 at a funeral in a long time. And I didn't know I wasn't going to preach it until the moment I stepped up to the pulpit.

I changed my message, and I hardly ever do that. But I changed my message yesterday based on something his son said. And it just struck me to preach a different text. But generally what I preach is John 14 verses 1 to 6.

And where it begins with, let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. That's during this meal. And I always point out, the disciples don't know it's the last supper. We call it the last supper because of the Da Vinci painting.

That's the title, The Last Supper. That's made its way into our vernacular, The Last Supper.

But they didn't know that.

This is just another Passover for them. So they're going, they're preparing, they're doing the things that need to be done. Where's the guest room where I may eat the Passover? He'll show you a large upper room, furnished and ready.

They're prepared for us, so the disciples are going, they're preparing. And the disciples set out, verse 16, and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

Now, it says in verse 17, and when it was evening, he came with the twelve. So now they're all together. Those who went ahead and prepared have come back. They've all come together now for this Passover meal.

And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me. Now, if you only had Mark's gospel, it would seem like that's the first thing that happened.

Like they get there, they sit down, and Jesus says, hey, one of you guys is gonna betray me. But it's not the first thing that happens. What is the first thing that happens? He washes their feet. He washes their feet.

Cuz if you go, you don't have to turn there, but if you were to go to John 13, it says, now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

During supper, when the devil had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son to betray him, Jesus knowing that the father had given all things into his hand, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper, laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist, and he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him, and then, of course, you remember, he came to Simon Peter.

Simon Peter, you won't wash me, and you go through that part. Now, when we are going through that text, it's verse 21, and Mark, or John 12, after saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.

And the disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. And John tells the story a little differently. Of course, each gospel writer gives his nuance, and John tells about the dipping of the bread, and handing it to Judas, and those things.

But the point is, Jesus washed their feet first, and then this announcement was made, which almost seems like it's... You have to think what Judas is experiencing in this moment. Jesus is kneeling down, washing the traitor's feet.

I just think that's powerful just to consider. I've heard people argue and say, well, I want to make sure I don't take too much of a left turn on this. Recently, there was a big hubbub over a commercial that came out during the.

Super Bowl.

It was called the He Gets Us campaign. And I am not a fan, I've said so on social media. I think that it oversimplifies important truths. And I think in one sense, it even misrepresents certain truths.

So I'm not a fan of the He Gets Us campaign. But what it was, this last commercial was all these people washing other people's feet, and the tagline was, Jesus didn't preach hate, Jesus washed feet. That was the tagline.

And so, that's become like this big thing. You know, if you want to be like Jesus, wash people's feet. If you want to be like Jesus, wash the feet of, not physically, Jackie. I said, like, don't touch nobody's foot.

No, no, no, no.

But the idea is, if you want to be like Jesus, wash Judas's feet. That's a, you know, Jesus. They'll say, Judas had his feet washed too, you know, or Judas ate too. That's a big phrase that goes out. And I think people, what they're trying to do is they're trying to lessen the impact of Judas's sin because Jesus still loved him.

Jesus still showed him love, right? We say love is an action, and Jesus showed love. That doesn't make it better. It makes it worse. Judas's actions, after having his feet washed by the hands of the one who created the world, makes it infinitely worse, not better.

And so, that's just my thought. Judas was willing to look into the eyes of the Savior of the world and walk and take 30 pieces of silver for his life. And it just doesn't make it better. Makes it worse.

So, having said that, coming back to Mark's gospel now, verse 19, they began to be sorrowful and to say to him, one after the other, is it I? I would say this is a moment of sincerity on 11 men's part.

One knows he is the guy. He's David when Nathan is saying, you know, the man stole the sheep and thou.

Art the man, right?

He knows he's the man. But the others, I think, are legitimately asking, could it be me? Because they know they have it yet, right?

Is it I?

They're seeing themselves in the state. I think all of us should be honest and say, we all have the proclivity for failure, right? Any one of us knows our ability to stumble. I mean, Mike said it the other night when he was preaching, right?

We want to feel like we would stand in the evil day. But what does the Bible say? Pride goeth before the fall, right? We should be honest and say, any strength we have is going to have to come from the.

Lord.

Any ability to stand. I mean, Peter is going to betray him. We're going to get to that. And Peter is going to do so after having said, I'll never do that.

I'll never do that.

So as I said, I think there's 11 sincere, is it eyes? And one devilish. Is it I? So Jesus says it is one of the 12. One who is dipping bread into the dish with me. And again, John's gospel gives a little bit more specifics on that, that he that he points Judas out.

Why? Why?

That doesn't become more of an issue at the time. It seems like they were somewhat blinded to that. And when he leaves, you know, well, why is he leaving? He's leaving to betray. But they think he's just going to go.

They think he's going to do something else, right? Like he's going to get more things for the meal.

Right.

They they they they could never imagine the treasurer would be the traitor. Oh, boy. Brother Andy, I mean, those who know the history here. We've dealt with that ourselves to never know. Never think the treasurer would be the traitor, because why do you make somebody treasurer because they're trustworthy.

If he's leaving, it ain't because he's going to to do evil. He's leaving because he's got to get more stuff for the meal. You know, he's got to go do something else. And then we come to this passage that I felt needed some taking apart, a little theological discussion.

And that's verse 21. For the son of man goes as it is written of him. But woe to the man by whom the son of man is betrayed. Now we'll deal with the second part in a moment. But before we do that, I want to talk about that first sentence.

Because it has two parts. I tell you what, these markers, these are great markers, but to get them open, you got to have Sylvester Stallone muscles.

And I don't.

I have the opposite.

All right.

So we see two things here. We see two things on display. And from a theological perspective, both of these things need to be understood. We see God's sovereignty, and we see Judas' responsibility. We see God's sovereignty, and we see Judas' responsibility.

I'll never forget. I'm telling a lot of stories tonight, and I hope I'm not being too anecdotal. But I won't ever forget this. I was at the very first Founders Conference I ever went to. Tom Askell was preaching, Steve Kreloff, Roy Hargrave was there, I met Michael Fallon there.

But that conference was the first time I'd ever really sat under real Calvinistic preaching. Like guys who were just, you know, confessional Calvinistic Baptist preachers. And I remember Tom Askell, he said, here's the two ditches.

He says the anti-Calvinist ditch says, because man is responsible, then he must be able to do certain things. And the hyper-Calvinist says, because God is sovereign, man must not be responsible. And so you have these two ditches, right?

And he says, the balancing act for you as a Calvinist. I remember looking out at the audience, there were probably only 30 of us. I mean, this is the early Founders Ministry meeting. This is back before Founders had taken off.

It's pretty big now. But he looked at us, and he said, if you fail to preach the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of men, then you failed to preach the Bible. He said, you must hold those two things together.

If you take the sovereignty of God and let that rob you from what? Yes. Yeah. And you have to be able to, you have to be able to, in some sense, harmonize them. But there is a part where you have to be able to step back and realize this is God, right?

God is smarter than me. But I do want to, I want to give you some thoughts on this tonight and some ways to maybe help bring these two things together. Because this is hard. This is the deep waters that a lot of men don't want to wade into.

The big question people ask, and I don't want you to answer. I want you to just meditate or think on this question without trying to answer, because I don't want it to be a barrage of yeses or nos, right?

The question is, was what Judas did necessary? Was what Judas did necessary? Okay, that's the question that I want you to consider. Again, don't answer it out loud. Don't, I don't want to, I don't want to have a debate.

I want you to really think on that question. Because immediately when we ask that, we take a step back and we say, well, was the cross necessary? The answer to that is absolutely, right? Well, was what Jesus, I'm sorry, what Judas did to, was that necessary in bringing about the cross, right?

Could there have been another way? That's, that's the first question that people automatically, well, if Judas didn't do it, maybe one of the other disciples would have done it. Or maybe the, maybe the scribes or the chief priests or the Pharisees, maybe they would have found another way to arrest Jesus.

But here's where we have to consider that. In Acts chapter 4 and verses 27 and 28, it says this. It says, for truly in this city, by the way, this is Peter is preaching, and he's preaching to the Jewish people.

He's preaching to the leaders. He says, for truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

So according to Peter in Acts chapter 4, the events leading up to the cross are, in fact, predestined. That is not my interpretation. That's literally what it says. It doesn't, I mean, if we look at the text, he says, in this city, there were gathered against Jesus, whom God anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Now, right away, the argument says, well, it didn't mention Judas, and I would admit it didn't mention Judas. But it does say that an event had been predestined to take place, that this event was predestined, predetermined to take place.

And therefore, if someone asked me, was what Judas did necessary? Here's my answer. My answer is it was necessary, but it was not coerced. It was necessary, but it was not coerced. And you say, well, what do you mean and how are you making that distinction?

Well, I'm going to use, I'm going to appeal to our Reformed ancestors, specifically Luther and Calvin. Luther and Calvin both wrote books on the will of man. Luther's book is called On the Bondage of the Will, and it was a response to Desiderius Erasmus, who had written On the Freedom of the Will.

And Calvin wrote a book called The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, which he was responding to a man named Albert Pygius, who had written a treatise on free will. He had written in opposition to Calvin.

And both of them, both Calvin and Luther, both made this similar argument, that if God knows something, then that thing will be by necessity. For instance, if God knows tomorrow I'm going to fall down a set of steps and God knows it with certainty, then there's no way I ain't falling down them steps because God knows it and therefore it is necessary.

Because if it didn't happen and God knew it would happen, then God is somehow wrong, right? So when we begin to think about God's knowledge of all things, we begin to realize how his knowledge is not only informative, but it is determinative.

His knowledge determines what will happen by necessity. Because if he knows it and it doesn't happen, then he didn't really know it. And you end up with something called open theism. Open theism says God has an idea of what will happen, but not certain knowledge of what will happen.

Because men are still ultimately free and men may change their minds. That's a dangerous place to say God does not know for certain. Now I do want to take a step back. Open theism is a little bit more nuanced than that, quite a bit more nuanced than that.

And there are different versions of it. And there are other versions of how God knows all things or something called Molinism, which looks at the future with what are known as variables and counterfactuals, things that could be different but aren't.

God knows what it could be and what it won't be. And therefore he actuates a universe where these things take place. There's quite complicated philosophy that goes behind this. But ultimately what Luther and Calvin were getting to say was that if God knows something will happen, then it is necessary.

Because God knows it. But that does not mean that God coerced it. So for instance, when we talk about God's knowledge and freedom, there are three terms, and again I have five minutes left, so I almost hasten not to do this, but I don't want to leave this out.

The three most common expressions of how God knows and decides or determines the future are called Determinism, Libertarianism, and Compatibilism. Now this is not Libertarianism as in like Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian.