We're turning the Bibles to Mark
chapter 14. And we have three memorials laid out before us
in this section of scripture. We looked at the memorial of the Gospel declaration of Mary
as she anointed the Lord's body for his burial. And we have the
memorial of Passover, which Lord Willing will look at soon. But
also in between these we have another memorial, and it's the
memorial of the life of Judas. And you only have to mention
the name Judas and it conjures up all sorts of understandings
in our heart for God's children. And for the people of this world
the name Judas is synonymous with betrayal and deceit. His name has become a memorial
in our language for believers and non-believers. Let's read
again from Mark chapter 14 verse 1. After two days it was the
Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests
and the scribes sought how they might take him by trickery and
put him to death. But they said, Not during the
feast, lest there be an uproar of the people. And being in Bethany
at the house of Simon the Leper, as he sat at the table, a woman
came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and
poured it on his head. But there were some who were
indignant among themselves and said, Why was this fragrant oil
wasted? For it might have been sold for
more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they criticized
her sharply. But Jesus said, let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has
done a good work for me. For you have the poor with you
always, and whenever you wish, you may do them good, but me
you do not have always. She has done what she could.
She has come beforehand to anoint my body for burial. Assuredly,
I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world,
what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to
her. Then Judas Iscariot, one of the
twelve, went to the chief priests to betray him to them. And when
they heard it, They were glad and promised to give him money,
so he sought how he might conveniently betray him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Your dear Holy
Spirit has written these words, preserved the words of truth
for us. We pray, Heavenly Father, that
you would cause them to be alive for us, that we would see that
they are living and active words, that you would speak peace to
the hearts of your people, that you would cause us to take heed
of the warnings that your scriptures contain, Heavenly Father. We
thank you for the salvation that we heard about earlier, the perfectly
secure salvation of all of your children in the Lord Jesus. And
we praise you for that, our Father. And we praise you also for your
holy justice in the punishment of those who have turned against
you. We thank you, Heavenly Father, that you rule over your enemies
for the good of your children throughout all time. We pray
Your blessing on us in Jesus' name. Amen. As you can well imagine, this
last week or so contemplating the story of Judas is something that's meant by
God to weigh heavily on our hearts. We are meant by God to see in
the life of this man things that we can see and should be able
to see in the world around us today. Whatever is written is written
for the comfort of God's people, that we through patience and
endurance might have hope. But these things are written
and they should be fresh to us. Some things to bear in mind,
as we looked last week just briefly at the chief priests and scribes, the Lord Jesus called them children
of the devil, children of their father, the devil. And when they
can get their hands on the Lord Jesus by deceit, and malice,
they would put him to death. And then we have in the testimony
of the Gospels the fact that it was Judas, as we saw last
week, who led the other disciples, the other apostles, in criticizing
this dear woman Mary for an act of faith, for an act of Gospel
declaration. And then down in verse 10 and
11 of this chapter, we see the activities laid out before us.
From he who sees absolutely everything, from he who sees things that
men think are in secret. As the chief priests and scribes
met in council, and the Lord Jesus was in Bethany, with that
family that he loved and amongst his own people. Judas went from
Bethany to the council meeting of the chief priests and the
scribes. As they were meeting to condemn
and find some way of taking the Lord Jesus by trickery in the
next couple of weeks, Judas turned up, And he went to the chief
priests to betray the Lord Jesus. And so we have in verse 11 the
first instance in all of the Gospel narratives of the chief
priests and the scribes ever rejoicing as the enemies of God
gather together to conduct their trickery they are glad and they
are rejoicing. And Judas then looks for a convenient
way to betray Him. And then remarkably Judas returns
to the apostles and acts out the next 36 hours as if he is
a genuine apostle. all the time harboring in his
heart a desire to kill the Lord Jesus, to have him put to death. And so the story of Judas has
many lessons for us, doesn't it? It shows as we'll see later
on, something of the depravity of all of our hearts, shows us
something of what it is for mankind to be in rebellion against God,
that in the hearts of all man is hatred toward God. And we've
got to keep remembering, we often think of these scribes and Pharisees
as wicked evil men wearing black capes and carrying pitchforks
around and being evil and wicked men. We must remember that like
Judas, these men were noted for their religious zeal. They were commended for their
moral behavior amongst all the religious people. They were the
ones before society who seemed to be those who were the most
godly, had the most right to speak to people on behalf of
God. They were the leaders of Christian
churches. They were the leaders of denominations. They were famous missionaries,
famous evangelists, famous leaders of Bible colleges. And so Judas becomes emblematic,
as these men are, of how far it is possible for people to
go in religion, how close it is for them to resemble the true
and the genuine, how much it is possible for them
to profess worship of God, and love for the Lord Jesus, and
zeal to care for His people, and yet be children of the devil." It is a heavy, heavy, serious
warning, and we should look through the eyes of faith and the eyes
of this scripture to see that as a reality in the world that
we live in. Otherwise this is a dead and
old letter, but it's a living letter and it's as relevant in
2012 in Australia as it was in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. So let's just follow something
of this man's life. Remarkably, he was chosen by
Christ to be an apostle. He spent over three years as
the close companion of the Lord Jesus and his disciples. He had daily conversations with
God in human flesh. He heard and he witnessed the
Lord Jesus, who the Scriptures say spoke as no man ever spoke. He witnessed remarkable miracles. He was in the boat fearing for
his life, and the Lord Jesus said, stop to a storm and be
still. He witnessed at least three times
the Lord Jesus raising Samara from the dead. He witnessed the
demons of hell acknowledging as they went as the Lord commanded
them, acknowledging that this man who was in their midst was
the Holy One of God. He was a fellow labourer with
the apostles. He was commissioned by God Himself
to go and preach the Gospel and perform miracles. He was
a man whose doctrine was sound, whose life was exemplary. He was someone who was so highly
regarded by the fellow disciples that he was the treasurer of
that band of men and responsible for the money. And until the Gospel is brought
to bear in his life, until that Passover time, until this incident
with Mary, no one suspected him at all. The Scriptures talk about
wolves in sheep's clothing. sometimes a sheep's clothing
can be remarkably like a real sheep. And it seems from the
context and the other Gospels that it was this incident which
sparked this incident with Mary, which sparked this venom in Judas
to be exposed and inflamed. See, she, according to the Lord
Jesus, proclaimed His death. And it was that proclamation
that incensed Judas. It was that rebuke of him and
all the others with him that caused him to go off as he did
and to really expose what's in his heart. You see, Satan's enmity
against mankind is really his enmity against the Lord Jesus. He despises the Lord Jesus with
a passion. And therefore he despises the
infinite eternal love that Simon spoke about again today. He despises
that love of the Lord Jesus for his people. He particularly despises
the doctrine of the cross, because it's at the cross where
He is given reign to do what He sees as His best against the
Son of God, finally gets Him in His clutches, and it's at
the cross that He is defeated. It's remarkable that Satan knows
from the beginning that these things are going to be, and yet
rather than quenching his hatred of God and God's children, all
it has done throughout eternity, throughout time, sorry, is to
inflame his hatred and to make it more severe. See, Satan hates the Gospel because
the Gospel declares his defeat. The Gospel declares the righteousness
of God. The Gospel declares the salvation
of the people that Satan had taken into captivity, so he thought,
in the garden. It's at the cross that the Lord
Jesus manifestly defeats that kingdom of darkness, manifestly
sets his people free, manifestly shows the richness
of his mercy and takes those who were captive of Satan and
makes them his captives. You see, all of us live there.
Judas is a picture of us as Adam's children. We were dead, according to Ephesians
2, in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of
disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves
in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the
others. We looked exactly like the others,
and we acted like them. We were like them in every sense,
except the fact that God, who was rich in mercy because of
His great love with which He loved us, has made us alive together
with Christ. So Judas is a great emblem of the most
horribly wicked thing that mankind does on this planet, is to stitch
together for themselves a robe of righteousness of their own
doings which looks as much as they can possibly make it look.
like the real robe of righteousness that the Lord Jesus blesses his
people with. There is nothing more dangerous
in all of the world than wolves in sheep's clothing. Got to remember
that Judas betrayed him with a kiss. See we often think We're often
led to think that the enemies of God are the wicked people
who live licentious lives out there on the streets and before
us in television and movies and song and other things. But if
you think about it, they lived, the New Testament was written
under the regime of Rome. one of the most wicked and evil
regimes this world has ever seen, and try and find much in reference
to Rome in the scriptures, and you'll find almost none of it.
In fact, they're told to obey the ruling authorities. They're
told to honour the authority of Rome. And yet the New Testament
hardly has a page which doesn't speak against false teachers. Wolves in sheep's clothing. Satan masquerading as an angel
of light is far, far more dangerous than any outright evil. No matter what that evil looks
like, the most dangerous and the most serious thing that any
of us can do in this world is to be exactly where you are at
the moment. and particularly to be exactly
where I am at the moment. Those who masquerade can go a long, long way in religion,
be esteemed by multitudes, to be considered genuine by all
the world and as only when the Gospel is proclaimed, when the
Lord Jesus is held up in His deity, when He is held up as
sovereign Lord who loved His people infinitely and eternally,
and loved them on the cross and bore their sins, and bore those
sins perfectly away, because He perfectly satisfied the justice
of God. This is what Mary was typifying. It was the Gospel that she was
typifying, and it incensed Judas. And the question that's often
asked, isn't it, people is, was Judas then a saved man for three
and a half years or more, and then he became a lost man because
of something he did. Simon spoke to us earlier about
the eternal covenant, that God's people are secure in Christ Jesus
from before the foundation of the world. Nothing could be more
blasphemous of our Lord Jesus than to claim that someone he
loves can be lost, to claim that someone that he died for can
ever have their sins imputed to them again. Just read what
he says in John chapter 6 with me from 37 to 40. this famous passage where the
Lord Jesus proclaimed His deity, proclaimed His sovereignty, and
He reduced a crowd of 20,000. Wouldn't it be wonderful to preach
to a crowd of 20,000 and have them following you and hanging
on your every word? He preached to a crowd of 20,000,
proclaimed who he was and who his father was, and reduced a
crowd of 20,000 possibly down to just 12. What turned them away were the
very things that delight the children of God. Verse 37, All
that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes
to me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from
heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent
me. This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all that
He has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it
up at the last day. This is the will of Him who sent
me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have
everlasting life, and I will raise Him up. at the last day. God never talks in terms of possibilities. He talks always in terms of absolute
certainties. Because He is God, that's what
it is to be God. When He said, let there be light,
what was there? There was light. When He said,
let there be billions upon billions upon billions of stars, what
happened? There were billions upon billions
upon billions of stars. When he says, I will lose none
of my children, who's going to stop him? Who's
going to stop him? John 10, 28. Just a couple of pages over.
And I, my sheep, verse 27, my sheep hear my voice and I know
them. and they follow Me. God's knowledge
is emblematic of His love. And I give them eternal life
and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them
out of My hand. My Father who has given them
to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them
out of My Father's hand. We are held in two hands, brothers
and sisters in Christ. We are held in the hands of the
Lord Jesus and we are held in the hands of God the Father.
It is a blasphemy to suggest that any one of God's children
can ever be lost. There is no such thing as saved
and then lost and saved and then lost. Because salvation is not
an act of man. Salvation is a free gift of God. And what caused Judas to fall? In his heart was hatred towards
God. But John 12 verse 6 tells us
that he was a thief. that he was a covetous man. He sought the things of this
earth. And remarkably, the Lord Jesus
for three years knew that he was a thief, stealing money from God. 1 Timothy 6.10 says that the
love of money is the root of all evil. It's not money, it's
the love of money which is the root of all evil. As I said earlier,
it was the Gospel that Mary declared that incensed Judas and caused
him to take that two-mile walk, three kilometers. From here to
beyond Tererra he walked, harboring malice in his heart against Him
who had done him no wrong whatsoever." This word that we have from God
is a word that as well as comforting the people of God, brings with
it warnings and chastisements as well. And as I keep pleading
with people, when difficult things come along and difficult things
in God's Word come along to us, we need to keep asking God to
shut us and we need to keep asking, what is God saying to me in these
circumstances? So the other eleven heard those
same words and for them it was a timely warning about the things
of this world and about the things that really, really matter. For
Judas it seemed to offend him to the core of his being. See,
the Gospel that's laid before men, the Gospel that's laid in
Zion as the Lord Jesus, who is the Gospel, the good news from
God, discloses Himself and what His purpose is in coming to show
His love for His bride and to die for her sins and to take
them away and to make her holy, spotless and blameless. Mary
loved much because she was forgiven much. But that same infinite
love of God for His people is part of the rock of offence and
the stone of stumbling that's laid in Zion. We either bow before
that rock or that rock who is God. will crush us in the last
days again these scriptures show us
that this is but the fulfilment of God's eternal purposes the
enemies of God will gather together They always gather together. Wherever we see a great multitude
of them, we know that they are the Lord's enemies because they
gather together in one purpose and about one thing they gather
together. They'll gather together around
their false gospel and stand as one opposed to the truth of
God. When the Lord takes an axe to
the root of their self-righteousness and takes an axe to the root
of their religion, they gather together against Him, as Psalm
2 says. They gather together and take
counsel together against the Lord and His Anointed One. So here they are, this group
of men in council, deceitfully trying to work out how they can
kill the Lord Jesus. And all of a sudden, Judas turns
up in their midst and they are rejoicing. God's enemies rejoice over putting
God to death. in the name of their religion. And Judas was a covetous man.
And they bring this sum of money. Judas says in Matthew's Gospel,
what will you give me? How much will you offer me to
betray him? It's a sign of how little they
valued God, isn't it? What was the price that they
determined? The price they determined was
the price of a slave, the most lowly human being they could
possibly imagine. That was the price that they
put upon the Lord Jesus. And that was the price that Judas
accepted for betrayal. He just complained about Mary
wasting, as he thought, 300 denarii worth of this spikenard ointment. And yet, there he is, preparing
to betray the Son of God for 30 pieces of silver. One of the problems that we have
is that we do by nature think of people as being good and part
of it is a natural reaction because we think ourselves good. But
people who have left the Gospel and turned away from the Gospel
will go in their religion and in their supposed worship of
God to places which will horrify us. There is no limit to where
they will go and believe that they are really serving God. The Lord Jesus says in John 16,
they will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is
coming. but whoever kills you will think
that he offers God service. These men who took counsel in
Jerusalem were religious people just as we see all around the
world today. They were religious people who
went to the law and went to their own works and their own goodness
to try and work out their salvation. They thought that salvation was
somehow dependent upon the goodness of man, the goodness of his free
will, the goodness of his works, and they actually think that
such is the goodness of their good works that they can put
God under obligation because of their good works to give them
extra crowns and rewards in heaven. It is only God's Spirit working
in a heart of a man that can show us that we have as much
opportunity in our flesh to do good works before God as Judas
had. How dare we blaspheme the perfect
work of the Lord Jesus to pretend that something that man does
is anyway acceptable to God. Mary's acceptance was a gospel
acceptance. Mary's good work was a gospel
declaration. And natural men, until they are
reborn by God, will cling to that refuge of lies with an intensity
which will shock us. but they will cling to it. It's
a total depravity where we say that man is not just depraved
because of what he does, but his depravity comes out of a
heart that is depraved. What we see here is the heart
of these people exposed, and only hearts of people are exposed,
really exposed, when people meet God. Eternity lies before all
of us, and we must meet God. You all will meet God. I will meet God. I pray that
God causes you to meet Him. dressed in the robe of the Lord
Jesus, and not a single stitch in that robe has anything to
do with anything that you have ever done. It is all purely God's
work. Then there is peace, peace in
our hearts before God, when we are made to know what we really
are, and we are at the same time made to see the Lord Jesus in
His glory. Judas is a reminder again that
there is a saving faith and a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus
and there is a faith that talks much about God but is not saving
at all. There is a repentance that God
brings in the lives of His people. We repent of what we are. We see Judas and say, that's
me. We don't see Judas and say, that's a wicked person and I'm
righteous. Judas repented a little bit later
on, but his repentance was just a worldly repentance. He still
hated God, he just hated the failure that he was. The other
lesson is that people say, God is unjust to save a certain number
of humanity and not to love them all and to try and save them
all. Judas is a reminder of the fact
that when we are saved, everything has to do with what God does. And when people go to hell, they
go to hell 100% because of their own activities. Judas had for three years seen
the Lord Jesus deal with these chief priests and these scribes
and their minions as they came to the Lord Jesus and attacked
Him and attacked Judas for plucking a few grains on the way to church
on the Sabbath, for not washing his hands before he had food. Carping, legalistic criticism
all the time, and yet Judas join with these people and they treat
him with absolute contempt, just 30 pieces of silver. And when
Judas returns to take the money back to them, They turn upon
him as God's enemies always will. They'll always bite and devour
each other. He returns to the temple and
says, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. And they said
to him, did they care about him at all?
They didn't care about Judas. What's that to us, they said.
It's got nothing to do with us, your repentance. We're not interested
in your repentance. We're not interested in your
soul at all. The enemies of God's people are
the enemies of all humanity. And there will come a time when
they will bite and devour each other. When the Lord strips away their fig leaves of righteousness,
they will bite and devour each other. The other lesson is, of
course, that unless God's grace restrains people, they will go
the way of Judas. If they are left to themselves,
if God leads you to yourselves, you will go the way of Judas. All God has to do is leave humanity
to themselves. In Romans 1, three times God
says, He just gave them over, He gave them over, He gave them
over. I pray that God doesn't give
people over to themselves. I pray for you young guys, Angus
and Jack and Noah. I pray that God never allows
you to have what you want, that He restrains us by His grace,
saves us by His grace. And ultimately, there is gospel
comfort in all of this for God's children, because the most wicked
acts for the most wicked man, the man who is an emblem of betrayal
and deceit throughout this world. All he ever did in his wicked
evil is fulfill the purposes of God, fulfill God's Word. The Lord Jesus came to Jerusalem
to die on that cross. He came to Jerusalem to be handed
over into the hands of wicked and deceitful men. He had to
be betrayed. He was betrayed. And in what seemed like the darkest
acts that human beings could ever perpetrate, against their
God comes the greatest act of salvation. Because the Lord lifted
up His Son on that cross and laid all of the sins of all of
God's people on that dear Lamb of God. And He bore the wrath
of God until God said, I am satisfied. I am satisfied with His sacrifice. I am satisfied with His righteousness. I am satisfied with Him and His
Bride because He and His Bride are as one before God. The worst thing that evil men
can do in this world is fulfill the purposes of God. and drive
God's people back into the arms of our Savior who loves us infinitely
and eternally. Let's pray.