The Tale of Two Disciples: Peter and Judas

I want to read this morning a passage from Matthew, if you'd find that in your Bibles. Matthew chapter 26, and I want to read through chapter 27 verse 10. Chapter 26, starting with verse 69, reading through chapter 27 verse 10. Whenever I am trying to make a decision about buying something or doing something, I like to sit down and think of all the positive reasons why I should do it, all the negative reasons why I should do it, and sort of weigh those with each other. I like, if I'm buying something, to sort of get a chart that says all the things that are advantage, one advantage that one item has over another, so I can really compare all that. When you see things side by side, it helps you to understand the differences, helps you to understand what they are, and I think in scripture that I want to read, God is doing that. He's placed the story of two people who were followers of his in some, one of the most difficult and painful experiences of their lives. This is sort of like the tale of two sinners and the outcome that comes in their life. Now, Peter was sitting out in the courtyard and a servant girl came to him. You also were with Jesus of Galilee, she said, but he denied it before them all. I don't know what you're talking about, he said. Then he went up to the gateway where another girl saw him and said to the people there, this fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth. He denied it again with an oath. I don't know this man. After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, surely you're one of them, for your accent gives you away. Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, I don't know this man. Immediately a rooster crowed, then Peter remembered the word that Jesus had spoken, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times, and he went outside and wept bitterly. Chapter 27. Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate, the governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. I have sinned, he said, for I have betrayed innocent blood. What is this to us, they replied? That's your responsibility. So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. Here are two followers of Jesus, two people who were chosen by Jesus to be disciples of his. When you looked at this beginning of the story, both of them heard Jesus say, come and follow me. And they said, yes, we're going to go. Now whenever you see people, you don't always know what they're thinking about. You don't always know their motive. You don't always know what's in their heart or their mind. But inevitably, as they make choices and decisions in their lives, those things begin to be clear. Both Peter and Judas listened to everything that Jesus taught. They saw the miracles that he did. They received assignments from him and they went and did them. If you looked at their lives, you would see two people who appeared to be exactly the same, devoted followers of Jesus. If you watched what they did, you would have seen very little difference between them. In fact, at the time of the Lord said the Last Supper, Jesus indicated that one of the disciples was going to betray them, going to betray him. The disciples didn't automatically look around and say, we know who it is. They didn't know who it was. When he said, every one of you are going to deny me or abandon me, none of them felt like that was something they could do. They saw on the outside someone who looked exactly like them. But in the end, these two people ended up being very, very different kinds of people. I don't know of any child that I've ever met who's been named Judas. We don't like that word. It rings in our ears something horrible and terrible. How is it that a man gets to this place? What's the story of two godly followers who end up in disaster? But when we read through the story as the Bible tells it, we don't pick it up all the time. But in the book of John, which was the last of the gospels to be written, he sort of has a longer perspective on the story of what took place. And he gives us greater indication about looking back on it, what he saw that made Judas different than Peter. In John chapter 6, I want to read a passage where it's describing an event that took place with the disciples. John chapter 6 verses 64 through 71, if you'd like to find that in your Bibles. In this event, Jesus is ministering to his disciples. He's been preaching. He's been declaring some what they called hard statements. What that means is he was asking of his followers to do something that would cause them to have to change their lives. Asking them to do things that were dangerous to them or difficult for them to do. He was asking them to say, I am ready to listen to you, Jesus, and change whatever needs to be changed in my life. And they were so radical, these changes were, that the disciples saw people getting upset. Jesus had crowds of people following, but suddenly many of them were leaving. So they came to Jesus and said, these things are so difficult, who in the world is ever going to accept these things when you say them? In verse 34, the story picks up, yet there are some of you who do not believe, this is Jesus speaking, for Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him. From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. You do not want to leave too, do you, Jesus asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. Then Jesus replied, have I not chosen you, the twelve, yet one of you is a devil. He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who though one of the twelve was later to betray him. In this story, John gives us a little more than the story. He looks back now in retrospect and sees in the life of Judas something far different than was in the life of Peter. In this story, he talks about the fact that Jesus knew from the beginning that one of them was not a believer. He was a devil, a person controlled by the voice and power of Satan. Jesus knew this from the beginning, but none of the disciples ever picked it up. Jesus invited him to come. He chose to come, but he did not come for the same reason that Peter came. When he asked them, are you guys going to leave me? Peter responded for all of them saying, you, Lord, have the words of life. Where else could we possibly go to receive the words of life but here? What Jesus meant by the words of life was the words that gave instructions so that people would know how to be able to make choices, so they would know how to be able to live depending on God for the provision of their life, so they would know how to live depending on God for the protection that he would give them, so they would know how to live so that their life might find its full, its completeness and fullness in their lives. You tell us the things we need to know to be able to live. Here we see in these two great men something very different. Here is a person from the very beginning who was a devil. Now I don't think the scripture means that Judas was Satan himself. What he's talking about is someone who is rebelling against the authority of God. That's what Satan did, rebelling against the authority of God. How was Judas doing this? He came into this thing with a whole different way of thinking. He recognized that people were seeing in Jesus the Messiah. Now the Messiah, many people, most of the people in the Jewish community believed that it was going to be a person who would come and establish a military kingdom and a civil government. And it appears as if from the very beginning Judas was not interested in trusting Jesus for the words of life, but interested in something entirely different than that. People can come and join the church, make professions of faith for all different kinds of reasons. Sometimes it might be financial things they want to gain. Sometimes they may want to be a part of a community of people that seem like they're real nice people. Sometimes they may want the benefits that come from being a part of a congregation. There could be many different reasons that people would come and say, I am prepared to say I give my life to Jesus. I am prepared to be baptized to show my old life has gone away and my new life has been raised up. But all the time inside of themselves they're thinking, what can I get from this? What can I get that I really want from this experience with these people? So that they're focused on themselves instead of God. That's exactly what the devil did. He listened to who God was but decided for himself he would do exactly what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it, the way he wanted to do it. Now when the disciple John looks back, he sees that these two people were very, very different. What Peter said is, we don't care how hard your teachings are. We don't care how much you challenge us. We don't care what you ask of us. We are prepared to give you everything. You alone have the words that will bring life to us. There is a statement of faith of great power, especially in the presence of Jesus, asking things of people that were hard for them to give. So difficult that many left. I hear what you're saying. And even though it means a change of my life, even though it means things will be different with me, I am prepared to obey what you say because your words bring life. You see, the trust that comes here from Peter to Jesus is a trust that says, you are someone I can depend on. What happens in Judas' life is he's saying, I can depend on me. Now this story is going to evolve so that the picture of Judas and Peter become even more clear. In John chapter 12, another event occurs in which Judas' nature is more clearly revealed. Jesus has gone to the house of some people and they're having a big banquet for him. And he's teaching the people. In the middle of this, a lady comes in and she pours expensive perfume, very expensive perfume about the amount, the cost of it would be the average wage, minimum wage for a person for a year. That's a lot of money. She broke that pint of perfume, whole pint, poured it on Jesus from head to foot. Judas protested. But one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected. Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages. He did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As the keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. All of a sudden we see what it was that made Judas different than Peter. He was concerned about money. He was so concerned about money that when money was put in the bag for everyone, he would take some of it out for himself. He was a thief. He was so concerned about money that he wanted this to be the focus of all that was taking place. And he wasn't honest enough to simply say that. John describes Judas after the fact, looking back on his life, saying he wasn't interested in the poor. He wasn't interested in the needy. He was interested in money. Now we get a little different picture. In the beginning when Jesus came and the disciples were all saying he's the Messiah, they all assumed that he would gather an army and defeat the Romans and drive them out and establish a government of Jews and Jesus would be the ruler and the disciples would be those with him. They even asked for places of position of power beside him. They all believed that. Judas did too. He had great plans for himself, maybe to be in charge of the finances of Jesus' kingdom, but he was interested in money. What can I get out of this? The story of Judas shows that a man who was willing to do whatever it took to get the money, to thieve, as a thief, take what he wanted, hide the end result. Peter, on the other hand, faced many different circumstances in which Jesus called him to task. One time when Peter was with Jesus, Jesus said that he was going to have to die. Peter expected Jesus to be the same kind of king that Judas did, but Jesus took him aside and he said to Peter, what you're doing is you're thinking like the devil is thinking. He called Peter demon-controlled, devil-controlled. No harder words could be said about anyone than that. Instead of leaving or getting mad, Peter listened and he learned. He was willing to rethink everything that he'd heard before. I've heard people say Jesus is going to be, or the Messiah is going to be a political kingmaker, a military man, but Jesus says that's not the way it's going to be. He was willing to change the most fundamental things he believed about God, the Messiah, and the future because he believed that Jesus' words were always true and must be obeyed no matter what. You see the difference between someone who trusts a little bit and someone who trusts completely. It's not possible for you to be a follower of Jesus and pick and choose what you'd like to believe, for it's either everything or it's nothing. It's either all of it or it's nothing. What Peter did was to say, I believe what you say. What Judas did was to say, I believe what I think, and regardless of what you say, I will listen to what you say. If I want to, I'll take some of it. If I don't, I'll throw the rest away. This failure to trust completely and totally means that a person has not given complete trust or faith in Christ. The Bible is describing what happens to a lot of people. You come to say, okay, I want to give myself to Christ, sometimes as a young person. You don't know exactly all that that's going to mean, but as life begins to unfold, you find that it isn't exactly like you want. People are not as nice to you as you thought they were going to be. God doesn't always give you everything you want when you want it. Suddenly there's trouble that comes along. You're asked to change your mind. You're asked to change your goal. You're asked to change things in your life that you really never wanted to change. And all of a sudden you're confronted with these things. And you have to decide, do I trust in Jesus Christ or myself? And as time goes on, God puts those choices in front of you until suddenly one day it's clear to you and everyone around you whether or not you believe you can trust Jesus. I know it's hard. It was hard for the people in Jesus' day, and it's hard for us. Because always learning what Jesus wants and how He wants us to live confronts us with things in our lives that we must change to be obedient to Him. The story now comes to the last days of Jesus' life. Here are two guys, as far as everyone knew, they were exactly the same, followers of Jesus. The Last Supper comes and Jesus says, one of you here is going to betray me. Each one of the disciples says, is it me, am I the one? And then when Judas comes with the soldiers to take Jesus away, it's really clear who it is. Here is a man who changed his mind. At the Last Supper, Jesus makes it clear that He's going to die, not the death of a soldier in war. Jesus makes it clear that He's going to give His life away. He's not going to fight. He makes it clear that what He's come to do is not what everyone expected of Him. He has different plans. And it's in that meal that Judas decides, I'm not going to do this. Now he went to people who were going to arrest Jesus and he bargained with them for money. See the theme of Judas' life? If Jesus is not going to provide me with this great way of life that I wanted to have as a government official, then I'm going to get some money and start my own business, have my own life. I'll have what I want regardless of what Jesus does. And so he turned Jesus in by simply saying, I'll go where He's at, make sure that you can find a place to arrest Him where no one's around. And that's what he did. Now the story of the text. He sees that Jesus is condemned. They're going to kill Him. And the reality of what happened came to him with great power. He suddenly saw that this innocent man was going to die because of what he did. The scripture says in this instance that Judas became, let me turn back to that page. The scripture says when Judas realized what was taking place, that he had betrayed innocent blood and I have sinned. I have done something that God does not want me to do. Suddenly he was confronted with the clash of his will and the will of God. I have rebelled against the authority of God. And I have done something that will cause an innocent man to die. The people who were paying him the money said it's not our responsibility, it's all yours. Judas then tried to do something about what he'd done. He wasn't repentant for what he'd done. He was sorry for what he'd done. There's a difference. If somebody steals from you and they suddenly have a conscience about it and they're sorry that they did it, they may tell someone else, they may be upset all their life that they did this, but they may never come back and actually correct what they've done wrong. Being sorry is different than being repentant. Being repentant means that you change the direction of your life. Judas caught up in the money, could not change the direction of his life. He was already committed to do what he thought was the right thing to do. He went to the temple, I'll throw the money in the temple and say now I'm through with it. And then he'll say I'll feel better. But when he did it, he didn't feel any better. The fear, the remorse came even stronger and he decided his only remedy was to take his own life. What happens here is a story of a man who's confronted with his sin but does not change from doing what he wants to do to doing what God tells him he should do. What would God have wanted from Judas? He would have come and said to Jesus, I did this to you. I recognize my failure and my sin. I acknowledge that it was wrong. I ask for forgiveness and I will tell you that from now on until the day I die, I will be faithful to live in obedience to you. But he didn't do that. He was sorry for what he had done, caused the death of someone who didn't deserve it, but he didn't know what to do but to take his own life. I think if you look at Peter's life and you see what he did, what he did to me is more reprehensible than what Judas did. Judas simply went to the place where Jesus was and identified who Jesus was. He didn't do anything bad to Jesus. The other people were going to do that. Peter on the other hand went to the place where they were trying Jesus and three separate times lied about his relationship with Jesus. He said one time, I don't even know him. The next time he said the same thing but he cursed, that is the kind of curse that would say may my dog die if I'm lying to you. The third time it was even worse and he asked for curses to be brought on himself. If I'm not telling you the truth, may my life be in misery. May I lose my health, may I lose whatever he has. We don't know what his oath was. But it was a curse in which if he was not telling the truth, he was inviting God to do damage to him. This should have caused someone to believe him. That's what he intended. That denial of Jesus and his relationship with him, I think is far more serious than what Judas did in my mind. And when Jesus looked in Peter's eyes, Peter realized what he had done to hurt him. His heart was broken and he cried bitterly. Bitter tears are tears that come out of shame, remorse, regret. Maybe it almost looks a little bit like Judas, except for one thing. The next thing when you hear about the story of the disciples being together, Peter is there. He did not stop the commitment of faithfulness that he had given to Christ. He was there to carry out the promise that he had made. It was not the sin that destroyed Judas, but the failure to acknowledge the authority of Christ as his Lord that doomed him. Peter was faithful to the disciples. He listened to what Jesus had to say when he came to talk to him. He was faithful in obedience to Christ in every way, stood to preach the sermon at the day of Pentecost before the same people he had lied to before. He turned his life around from the lie to the faithfulness. That is what repentance means. It means to change your direction, to denounce what you are doing and turn away from it toward something else. The tale of these two sinners is locked in this last event. One man unwilling to trust Christ. Another one, even though he has done something terrible, repents, turns back and redeems himself by submission to the authority of Christ. Now what this story tells us is the nature of faith. What does it mean to believe in Christ as the Lord and the Savior? It means that you say to him, I think that your words are the only words that can guide my life. So when I read what you have to say, they become authority to me. I can do nothing except obedience and submission to those words. There are many people who come to say, I give my life to Christ, but they really mean some things in my life. They have a compartment of their life that they reserve for themselves. I talked to a person one time and said, have you given your life completely to Christ? And they stopped and thought a minute and said, well, maybe 98%. What Christ wants from us is a complete surrender of ourselves to the authority that he has over us. He wants us to live anxious to hear what he has to say, even though some of those things he has to say to us will cause us to stop, look at ourselves, and to realize we must live differently. We must think differently. We must act differently because now Jesus Christ himself is guiding our lives. That devotion to Christ brings new direction in life to us. It requires putting the will of God above our own. It requires putting the kingdom of God above our own life and lifestyle. This submission can be lived right next to a person who has not done that and no one can see or no one can tell until the crucial moment comes when God says, here is something I want you to do. We look at it and we say, it doesn't look very good to me, it doesn't look very proper for me. In fact, I think I have a better idea. It's hard to trust something you don't really know. We have one of those Garmin's in the car, you know, and we were driving someplace that had never been that direction before. I'd been that place but I'd always been going south instead of north. So we got to this place and it said, turn here to the left. I looked over to the left. I could see no signs of anything that I recognized and I kept on going. Carol said, you were supposed to turn right back there. I said, well, I didn't see anything there that I recognized as being right. It took me four miles further down the road before I recognized I was in another town completely different than where we were going. It's hard to trust something if you in your own mind don't think it's the right thing to do. But what God asks of us is to say, whatever you tell me will be the truth. And however hard it is, however costly it is, however dangerous it is, I will do it. In this story, even though Judas was called as a disciple, heard all the story Jesus did, even though he did things in ministry and witness like the other disciples, he's indicated here that he spends eternity in hell. So you can join a church and you can be a church member all of your life and still not place your faith and your trust in Christ. How can you tell the difference? You let Christ have control, you read the scriptures, you talk to him about decisions, and when you know what he wants you to do, you do it whatever the difficulty or cost. And there will always be cost to following Christ. But if your trust in him is not great enough, then you're never going to be able to make it. I trust my garment if it tells me what I already know is the truth. Other than that, I've found that it's not very reliable. It keeps telling me to turn in places that I know I don't need to turn. So when I get to a spot when it tells me the truth, it's hard for me to recognize it. But you have to have the confidence in God that he always tells you the truth. And you have to be prepared to do something that you never would do unless God said do it. Judas did not. He trusted his own judgment and his own ideas straight to hell. What Jesus asks when he says, come and follow me, is not for you to follow when it suits you or when it's comfortable or when it doesn't cost anything. He asks you to follow him no matter what. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? I'll tell you how you can test yourself. Do you find yourself in your past doing something that you know God didn't want you to do or failing to do something he told you to do because in your own judgment it didn't seem prudent? Imagine this. The human mind says, I know what God says, but my human mind is smarter than God's. Now we can justify it a lot of ways, but in the bottom line is it means we really don't trust him. What Christ asks is to believe enough in him that you do whatever he says. If you've said you trusted Christ in your life in the past, but you live a little bit different than that, I'd like to ask this morning that you change from being Judas to being Peter. Say, Lord, I've said I trusted you, but I realize that I really never have given everything to depend on you. You can do that right now. You just say to God, I want to live in obedience to you in every part of my life. And what God asks of you, you will know. Second thing I want you to ask, is there something in your life right now that God is talking to you about that you need to do? Maybe you're not sure if you know God's will exactly, but if you do it thinking that you're obeying him, that's all he asks. Father, we come before you to learn from the lives of others. What a tragic thing it is to see a man give three years of his life to following Jesus and end up in hell. What a tragic thing it is to see a man who learned so much about you and how to live, but falls short by trusting himself instead of Jesus. Help us to learn. So today, for me and all of us here, I want to ask if there's anything you want from us, you make it clear. And you give us the faith to say to you, whatever you say, Lord, I will do. In the name of Christ, I ask this. Amen. We're going to sing an invitation hymn this morning. If there's some kind of promise you want to make to God and you want someone to pray with you about it, you can come and I'll pray with you about it. If there's something you know God's asked you to do, you want to come and make a promise to that. It's a way by which you can say before God and others, this is my commitment and we encourage and help you to support that. Would you stand please while we sing? This is the invitation of Jesus to us. ...poor and needy, wounded and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love and power. I will rise and go to Jesus, he will embrace me in his arms. There are 10,000 charms, it's number 420. Come ye thirsty, come and welcome, God's free bounty for him by. He will even true repentance, free grace that brings you nigh. I will rise and go to Jesus, he will embrace me with his arms. In the arms of my dear Savior, oh there are 10,000 charms. Would you join me please in prayer? Father, we're thankful for the assurance you give us that your words are trustworthy. We ask that our own words would be trustworthy. That the promises we make to you we would keep. We ask, Father, in the challenges of this week, and when we come to choices that need to be made, and we know what's right, and we know what you ask, that we will make them regardless of the apparent consequences. We ask, Father, that we might be found faithful in every circumstance that we face. In the name of Jesus, we ask that. Amen. Did you need to say something? Okay, would you ask you to pray for Brad, that he'll be obedient to Christ this week, and we'll be praying for you. Thank you. Amen. Be strong in the Lord, and be of good courage, for he is your God. Be strong, be strong, be strong in the Lord, and rejoice for the victory is yours. Have a super week.