Grace Chapel Bible Ministries
Worship Call 1103 Judas - 2024/07/01
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Welcome to Worship Call with Bible teacher Buzz Lalbeck. Buzz is the pastor of Grace Chapel Bible Ministries located in Duncan, South Carolina. This ministry is dedicated to the verse by verse teaching of God's word and discipleship programs aimed at strengthening the faith of God's people. Now here's today's message. You've had two, we have two culprits here. You have a group of culprits which are the religious leaders. And they got exactly what they wanted when they were able to hand down a conviction of Jesus and then sent him off to be tried by Pilate. Then you have Judas who didn't get anything that he wanted. The religious leaders, they were probably slapping each other high fives and congratulating themselves. Whereas Judas fell into misery. Judas gave back what he had acquired and repentance. The religious leaders, they were unrepentant. But one side repent and one other side not repentant, but they were both just as equally lost. Neither side had a representation in heaven. This is the second day of the week in God's created order. The first day of the seventh month, two thousand, twenty fourth year of our Lord. And this is another fine day in the Lord. Father in heaven, thank you for this time together. Thank you for another day that you woke us up in. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for being our God. And we've all, we all sinned and come short of the glory of God. But we have a representation in heaven that when we repent, when we turn back and when we confess our sins, you are faithful and you're just to forgive us our sins because of the one whom we have received our Lord Jesus Christ. Open our hearts this morning to the study of your word as we continue to grow in grace in the knowledge of our Lord and say, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Glad you're here with us this morning and it's Monday morning to continue to be in prayer with for for those that are on vacation this week and family and the Rogers family and be with them. Also be with Gary. He's doing a funeral tomorrow for a family and we were always praying that the gospel message will go off in the time like this and grieving that folks will come to realize that eventually it's going to be their turn to leave this world and to be face to face with the Lord. Either they're going to either stand at the judgment seat of Christ as believers to be evaluated for what they've done in the body or the great white throne as unbelievers before they are sentenced to the eternal lake of fire. So it's an important time. So be with Gary and that time and for this family. We continued this morning with Matthew 27 verse 1. Let's read through this. Matthew 27 verse 1, "Now when the morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus to put him to death." They had spent early morning hours to still consider night as before the dawn and they had worked tirelessly and to try to assemble two that would agree together. And the conviction that they found was based on a not where two agreed but they two wrongly agreed. We saw that one would be brought in and he would be questioned. Did Jesus say that he was going to tear down this building and raise it up again? And he said yes and went to the next one and they were able to concoct and to try a false statement and so finally they got their conviction and they're pressing 40. Let's back up to that as you were. And so now they bound him. They beat him. They bound him and they're sending him off to Pilate because they themselves could not put Jesus to death and they bound him verse two and they bound him and led him away to be delivered to Pilate the governor. Then when Judas who had betrayed him saw that he had been condemned. He felt remorse and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priest and elder saying I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. But they said what is it to us, see to it, see to that yourself and he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed and he went away and hanged himself. So by dawn the interrogators finally had their evidence that they needed. Though it was weak, contrived, false, confused and misinterpreted, they were satisfied with it. But again, Judas himself was not so satisfied. Finally, the Pharisees were going to rid themselves of Jesus. Judas for his part had sold out Jesus, not so much for hatred, but for opportunity to gain something, something he wanted, he was out of greed and maybe he didn't have any animosity toward Jesus, he traveled with Jesus for the last three years and there just wasn't nothing that would cause Judas to hate him so bad. But 30 pieces of silver, 30 pieces of silver, it could do a lot for him and it was quite the sum of riches so he went for it. And Judas for his part had sold Jesus out nevertheless, he had betrayed him and we might assume on this and looking at this that he saw that he says coming back here that he saw the verdict, hand it down, coming back. Then when Judas who had betrayed him saw that he had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned to 30 pieces of silver and cheap priests. Three years Judas has watched, Judas had the front row seat of watching Jesus who did nothing, who did nothing but good, who healed, who caused a blind to see who made the lame walk the death to hear, the teaching that he had and the love that the disciples had for him and there was not one thing that Judas could look at, Jesus said he was wrong, he was that he committed any crime Judas may have even understood what Judas meant by raising up this temp, by destroying the temp on raising it up three days. And Judas may know that it was contrived that Jesus didn't mean this, as he's watched in the trial, he knew that Jesus meant his own body, that Jesus didn't go out to cause a rebellion and all that, he watched as he was lied against over and over again. He saw that what was coming down and the beatings that he was already taking in the blindfoldedness and each time Judas was looking at this and saying, this is my handiwork. This is what and so Judas was having a problem with a conscience, but what about the spirit, asking himself what have I done and from his vantage point he saw the two ends of the spectrum. He saw the evil of the Pharisees, he saw what they were doing, he saw the lies, he saw the arrogance, he saw the ones that he had thrown in with, fully, you know, Judas, I don't want paint Judas as being a victim at all, but Judas unlike the Pharisees may have not been so diabolical. And I say this hesitantly, but an indiscretion, he saw an opportunity to get rich. He saw a, he saw and if he could do this, he could make some money and Jesus said he was going to die anyway, what's it matter if he sold Jesus out, who knows what was going in. Maybe in other areas Judas was a could have been seen by friends and family around to be a good guy, who knows, who knows, but one thing we do know that he had some kind of conscience, you know, you ever known a guy, a good guy, a friend, maybe we're talking about ourselves, that we threw in with the wrong side, that we aligned ourselves with the wrong person, the wrong people to find ourselves on the wrong side of the argument and realize how I've asked people before, I said, you know, you're throwing in with these guys. You're a good guy, you never stop and think about the people you're associating with. And in fact Judas threw in with the Pharisees and he found out later on he was in the wrong. But you know what, every time, the fact is, every time that we sin, think about it, every time that we sin, falling short, Parmitiah means to fall short, we fall short of the righteous of God, we fall short of our walk with the Lord, we have distance ourselves from God, we have, and all sin, all sin is against God, Psalm 51 4. This is David and he says, against you, you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in the sight so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. And every time that we choose to sin, we have chosen to align ourselves with a devil. My question is for those good people, and a good and quotation mark, who run with the wrong crowd, you're a decent person, do you, do you not see the side that you're choosing? And when, and we can be asking ourselves the same question, we're good people, moral people. And when we sin through our, through our lives, through our arrogance, through our mental attitudes, sins too, and whatever our sin might be, are you recognizing the side that you are choosing? And Judas may not been so diabolically evil as the Pharisees. He may have been as the others were described, as other people were described as a good man. Otherwise, he had an indiscretion, yes. And he was carried along with greed. And by the way, he would throw back the, he throws back the money, he gives it back to him. He, he, he says, I don't want it anymore. He repented, but does that square away? Does that, does that restore him? I don't know. In fact, he's not the only guilty one. He was not the only guilty party, there was the Pharisees, there was the, there's Judas, but there's also the house itself, Acts 2, 36, therefore, this is Peter's speech. This is what he's telling the people. This is after the resurrection in the book of Acts, he says, therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. This Jesus whom you crucified, he's talking to people, he's challenging the people. This is not, this was not just religious leaders, but this was the crowd. Now when he heard, when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter, and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The crowd chose sides too. They may have voiced their objections against Jesus shouting crucify him. And they may have vocally cast insults at him when he were at the foot of the cross. Or they may have acquired approval for what was going on. Maybe they didn't cast an insult at Jesus, but nonetheless, they approved by their silence that what was taking place was, you know, well, he must have done something. Or maybe they were even wondering what crime he committed. It was for these that Jesus prayed upon the cross, all of these. He prayed on the cross for these right there. Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. And they were deceived. So on one hand, the Pharisees, they were unrepentants. They got what they wanted, and they were satisfied with it. Judas also got what he wanted, and he wasn't so satisfied with it. And the Pharisee, but yet they were both condemned. They were both, one was repentant and one wasn't. Judas was outwardly repentant. He regretted for what he did, but here's the difference. Neither one had nothing to turn to. You see, repentance means to change your mind, not in the L. And if you're going to turn away from one thing, you must turn to another. Judas had a conscience problem. He recognized morally. We may say this is a moral position, that he recognized that what he did was wrong. He made a wrong decision. See, Judas is dealing with his position. He's dealing with his actions, which comes from his lost position. And when it boils down to it, he sees what he, now, the combined with everything else, the Pharisees were arrogant. They were under the arrogant skills, remember those arrogant skills, you have self-justification. They justified Kipus. We saw that how Kipus said it's more prudent for one man to die than the many. And so there was self-justification. There's also self-denial lying to his self. The Pharisees were lying to themselves. That they were in the right, that they were good people, that they were religious people, that they were in charge, they lied to themselves, and self-absorption, it was all about them. So they were right. They never came to any type of repentance. For Judas, he wasn't so much on that. But the guilt and the shame, and all that was that which bothering Judas, we see this today. Sometimes we get even caught up in a sense of others. And we overlook our own sin, or we get, as I said to one man who was looking at the sins of others, but yet he had sins in other directions. And I asked him, I said, or talk to him, I said, here's the problem, you're only bothered because it affects you, you forget the wording that I use. But he was morally indignant, but not spiritual. But it's sin that he was seeing in others, it upset him, but yet he was able to ignore his other sins. So here's Judas, and see this was a moral issue. This was an issue that he recognized his own wrong. But when he repented, there was no one to turn back to. John said that, I say these things to you that you may not sin, but when you do sin, you have an advocate. And on the Pharisee side, they were subject to the eight woes that we saw in Matthew 2313. And a woe is a state of intense hardship and distress, disaster, horror. And I've heard somebody say that the word woe is damned, you Pharisees are damned. But Judas was convicted and did repent, he did change his mind. If he could go back and do it again, or redo it, he would have stayed loyal to Jesus. And recognizing his innocence, we can, and this is the important point, we can be sorry for the things that we do, and we can repent from doing them. I can regret A, B, C, or D, but did we really turn back to the Lord? I could stop drinking, I could stop, you know, beating my wife, I could stop doing a lot of things. And I said that I shouldn't ought to do that. And I regret doing it, and I may have tears or repentance like Esau, but did I really turn back to God? See, Judas was having a conscious problem, he was having a moral problem, a moral issue. When we repent, are we just feeling sorry for what we did, or are we actually turning back away from our sin and turning to something, which is the Lord? Matthew 27, 3. Then when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that he had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned a 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. But they said, what is it to us? See to it yourself. See, he's alone at this point, Judas had nobody. He had nobody to turn to. He was alone in his misery, cut off. He didn't have an advocate, all right? The only difference between him and the Pharisees is the Pharisees don't know, I think maybe Judas already knows that he's lost with no hope. The Pharisees don't know that they, the Pharisees don't have hope either, but they don't know it yet. And they threw the pieces of silver, and he threw the silver pieces into the temple sanctuary into parting, and he went away and hanged himself. Yes, Judas was repentant. This means change one's mind. And again, if you're going to turn from one thing, you've got to turn to another. There's a far cry between the feeling of guilt for a wrong and regret and actually repenting and turning to God. Peter, you can say, well, what's the difference between what he did and what Peter did? And somebody may say, Peter denied Jesus three times, even after he said it. But understand this that Peter, as much as we want to say that, how much wrong that he did. He was in the communion going back to the upper room. Judas was sent out. He didn't have communion. Jesus said, whatever you got to do, what do you do, do it quickly, and Judas left and Satan entered into him. There was no communion. It was Peter who Jesus had promised that it would be a part of, will be one of the, will be sitting on one of the 12 thrones. Luke, let's look at Luke 22, 28, and the promise of restoration. You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And just as my father has granted me a kingdom, I grant you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and you will sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission sift you all like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. But he said to the Lord, with you, I am ready to go both to prison and to death. And he said, I say to you, Peter, the rooster will crow today, not crow today until you have denied three times that you, that you know me. And, and so Jesus already knew he already, he knew what Judas is going to do. He also knew what Peter was going to do. But with Peter, he says, there's going to be a restoration. With Peter, there will be a spiritual restoration. Peter was simply afraid is, is reaction to the crises he and when he cried, when he wept, he recognized his spiritual brokenness and, and he would be restored. No such dialogue with Judas. And it was due to a unconverted heart. Let's look at a few things about Judas. Let me bring that up here if I can do that. Looks like I can. Here we go. All right, let's see. All right, number one, Judas saw his own sin, Judas saw his own sin and how it led to the death. All right, point one, Judas saw his own sin and how it led to the death of an innocent man who armed no one. What Judas had was a moral issue. He had an issue of the conscience. He had a guilt reaction, a, an unbeliever can have, can have guilt, can have a guilt reaction as well as a believer. Number two, Judas repented. But who did he repent to? Who did he confess to? The priest, not to God. He didn't go to God. He went to the priest and he, he admitted his, he was one sinner. Here's a sinner who confesses to another sin. First John 1 9 says, if we confess, if we confess our sins, he faithful and just forgive us our sins and cleanses from all unrighteousness. We bring our sins to the Lord, not to one another. Now, yeah, I know James. He said, confess your sins to one another, it's a different story altogether in context. Verse three, he tried to undo his wrong by giving back the money. His reactions were driven by guilt and not the absence of a relationship with God. Four, he confessed his sin. He confessed to the priest and not to God. Once again, kind of repeated there, Judas was left alone to himself. He was helpless. He had no representative, see, when you walk away from God, you walk away from any hope and all hope, all the one who is ever restored, Jesus forgives sins. He walked away from Jesus. He betrayed Jesus. He rejected Jesus. He had no representation. Number six, he got rid of the very object that motivated his actions, the money. And now he is left with nothing, no heavenly riches and no earthly riches. In our repentance, we may turn around and we may seek to undo the damage that we've done. We may give to charity, we may give up everything, we may do all the things humanly possible to undo what we've done in the past. But it's not what we've done. It's the spiritual issue that caused us to do what we've done, our position, our relationship with the Lord, the absence of which causes us and motivates us to do those things. So just to reverse it by our own human effort. We can never, let's put it this way, man can't fix what man broke. Number seven, with no hope in the now or eternity, he's completely empty. He hurries the inevitable along to meet his eternal destiny and judgment by killing himself. What a terrible and listen. Eventually in this life we make it all that we want and we may be satisfied as a Pharisees of having gotten exactly what we want or we can feel as guilty as Judas trying to make things right by our own actions, doesn't matter, in both situations we are both just as lost. And so what about you, when we boil it down to that, where are we? Just like God asked the man in the garden, where are we? Yes, we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We've all sinned. But when we turn back, are we turning to something? Is our repentance due to our own guilt, our own soul as being bothered, our own conscience, our caution because both believers and unbelievers have a conscience and both believers and unbelievers can be convicted of wrongdoing. But when we turn back from that wrongdoing, is it simply motivated by our guilt? Or is it motivated by our absence from a relationship with the Lord? John said once again, John said, "I say these things to you that you may not sin, but if you do sin, you have an advocate." You see, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are his. And when we sin, we go against God. But when we turn away from that sin, we turn back to God for full restoration. And let's close it out in prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for this opportunity this morning to fellowship in Your Word. Thank You for a new week. Pray this morning for those family members that are on the road and on vacation. We pray for their safety and for friends that are also in another direction. We pray Heavenly Father for our friend who's going to do a funeral tomorrow. We pray Heavenly Father for the words that made the Spirit put within his heart and made it, made someone may come to understand the Gospel and be saved. We pray for our neighbor, Rosemary, for the health and for recovery. We pray for the remission of the cancer and for the pain that she's suffering, I pray Heavenly Father for the ease that's suffering. It's more than as we continue on in this week as we continue, let us walk into life. As the, as you are in the light and continue to press forward. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. All right. Another fine day, the Lord. Keep your armor on. Keep fighting a good fight of faith. Lord, will and Spirit guide, Raptor Penn. We'll be back here in the A.M. [silence]