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Why Did Jesus Choose Judas Knowing He Would Betray Him · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: Why did Jesus choose Judas when he already knew Judas
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  Speaker 1: would betray him? Before choosing the twelve, Jesus prayed all night.
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  Speaker 1: When morning came, he called Judas by name. He gave
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  Speaker 1: Judas the same authority as the other eleven. He trusted
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  Speaker 1: him with the money. He kept him close for three years.
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  Speaker 1: And he knew how it would end. Thirty pieces of silver,
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  Speaker 1: a kiss in a garden, armed men in the dark.
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  Speaker 1: This is one of the hardest questions in the Bible.
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  Speaker 1: Was Judas forced to betray Jesus because prophecy said he would?
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  Speaker 1: If he had no choice, why was he blamed? And
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  Speaker 1: if he was free, why did Jesus choose him, wash
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  Speaker 1: his feet, and keep the door open until the last hour?
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  Speaker 1: The real mystery is not why Jesus chose Judas. It
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  Speaker 1: is why Judas still chose betrayal after everything Jesus gave him.
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  Speaker 1: That is the question. Let us find out. It begins
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  Speaker 1: on a mountain, in the dark, the night before anyone
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  Speaker 1: was chosen. Luke records it in a single sentence that
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  Speaker 1: most readers pass over without stopping. In these days, he
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  Speaker 1: went out to the mountain to pray, and all night
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  Speaker 1: he continued in prayer to God, and when day came,
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  Speaker 1: he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom
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  Speaker 1: he named apostles. all night, not an evening, not an hour,
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  Speaker 1: the entire night, alone on a hillside, before a single
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  Speaker 1: name was spoken. And when the sun came up, he
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  Speaker 1: came down and began to call them out of the
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  Speaker 1: crowd one by one, Simon, whom he named Peter, Andrew,
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  Speaker 1: James and John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son
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  Speaker 1: of Alphaeus, Simon the zealot, Judas the son of James,
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  Speaker 1: and Judas Iscariot. Whatever this choosing was, it was not careless.
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  Speaker 1: It was not a lapse in judgment or a name
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  Speaker 1: added at the end of a long list. It came
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  Speaker 1: out of a night of prayer, spoken in morning light,
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  Speaker 1: in front of everyone. Now hold that beside what John
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  Speaker 1: tells us. Writing decades later, John says something that ought
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  Speaker 1: to stop the reader cold. Jesus knew from the beginning
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  Speaker 1: who those were who did not believe. and who it
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  Speaker 1: was who would betray him. The Greek phrase is ex-arches,
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  Speaker 1: from the outset, not discovered along the way, not realized
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  Speaker 1: in the final week when the money went missing, from
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  Speaker 1: the beginning, so we are left with the plain shape
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  Speaker 1: of it. He knew, and he called him anyway. Jesus
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  Speaker 1: later placed both truths into one sentence. The Son of
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  Speaker 1: Man will go as it has been determined, but woe
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  Speaker 1: to that man who betrays him. Luke 22.22 God's plan
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  Speaker 1: was certain, but Judas was still responsible. The Bible never
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  Speaker 1: says Judas was forced to betray Jesus. Jesus knew the
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  Speaker 1: betrayal would come, but he never caused it. Judas received truth, authority, friendship, warning,
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  Speaker 1: and mercy. Prophecy did not turn Judas into a betrayer.
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  Speaker 1: It revealed where his own choices would finally lead. So
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  Speaker 1: who was he? His name in the Gospels is Judas Iscariot,
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  Speaker 1: and the surname has been argued over for centuries. The
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  Speaker 1: leading proposal is that Iscariot comes from Ish-Kerioth, Man of Kerioth,
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  Speaker 1: a town in Judea in the south. If that reading
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  Speaker 1: is right, it carries a quiet detail with it. He
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  Speaker 1: may have been the only southerner in a company of Galileans,
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  Speaker 1: the one with the different accent, the outsider at the fire.
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  Speaker 1: It is a reasonable reading, And it is worth saying
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  Speaker 1: plainly that it is a reading, not a fact. What
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  Speaker 1: is not in doubt is the position he was given.
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  Speaker 1: Judas carried the money bag. In a group of traveling
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  Speaker 1: men supported by the gifts of others, that is the
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  Speaker 1: role you hand to someone you trust. He kept the funds,
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  Speaker 1: made the purchases, and distributed to the poor. When Jesus
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  Speaker 1: spoke at the Last Supper about going out to buy
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  Speaker 1: something for the feast, it was Judas the others assumed
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  Speaker 1: he was speaking to. That is what his ordinary role
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  Speaker 1: looked like from the inside. He was not a spectator.
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  Speaker 1: He was not carried along as decoration. He was inside.
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  Speaker 1: Three years. He heard the sermon on the mount from
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  Speaker 1: the front. He was there when the parables were told
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  Speaker 1: to the crowd, and there again in the evening when
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  Speaker 1: Jesus explained them privately to the twelve alone. He was
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  Speaker 1: in the boat in the storm, and saw the wind stop.
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  Speaker 1: He watched a funeral procession reverse itself outside nine. He
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  Speaker 1: almost certainly stood outside a tomb in Bethany and heard
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  Speaker 1: a dead man's name called out and watched him walk
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  Speaker 1: out still wrapped in the cloth they had buried him in.
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  Speaker 1: He ate with Jesus. He slept near him on the road.
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  Speaker 1: He heard how Jesus prayed when there was no crowd
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  Speaker 1: to hear it. He saw him tired. He saw him weep.
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  Speaker 1: He was close enough for long enough. to know the
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  Speaker 1: difference between the public teacher and the private man. And
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  Speaker 1: there was no difference. Whatever access to God a human
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  Speaker 1: being can be given, this man was given it for
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  Speaker 1: three years without interruption. And that is the part that
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  Speaker 1: should stop us, because we tend to imagine that closeness
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  Speaker 1: would have solved everything if I had been there, if
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  Speaker 1: I had seen the storm stop with my own eyes.
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  Speaker 1: If I had watched Lazarus walk out of that tomb,
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  Speaker 1: I would never have walked away. Judas saw all of it.
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  Speaker 1: Proximity was never the missing ingredient, and underneath all of
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  Speaker 1: it something else was growing. John tells us quietly in
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  Speaker 1: a parenthesis, years after the fact. Describing an incident we
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  Speaker 1: will come to shortly, John notes that Judas objected to
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  Speaker 1: a costly gift and then adds the reason. He said
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  Speaker 1: this not because he cared about the poor, but because
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  Speaker 1: he was a thief, and having charge of the money
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  Speaker 1: bag he used to help himself to what was put
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  Speaker 1: into it. Read the tense carefully. Not he stole once.
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  Speaker 1: He used to help himself. It was a habit. A small, private,
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  Speaker 1: repeated thing, taken from a common purse that people had
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  Speaker 1: given to sick men and hungry families. Nobody watching would
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  Speaker 1: have seen it. There was no dramatic moment when Judas
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  Speaker 1: became a thief. There was only a first time, and
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  Speaker 1: then a second time, and then a season of it,
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  Speaker 1: and then a way of life so ordinary he stopped
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  Speaker 1: noticing it. That is what makes the story frightening rather
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  Speaker 1: than merely sad. The betrayal at the end of this
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  Speaker 1: story was not a rupture in his character. It was
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  Speaker 1: a harvest, something planted early and watered quietly for years
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  Speaker 1: in the dark, while everything on the surface looked exactly
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  Speaker 1: like discipleship. And here is what should unsettle every one
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  Speaker 1: of us. For three years, nothing about him looked like
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  Speaker 1: a man on his way to a rope.
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  Speaker 2: He preached.
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  Speaker 1: He healed. He carried the money. He sat at the table,
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  Speaker 1: and the door was still open. Then, six days before
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  Speaker 1: the end, at a dinner in a small town outside Jerusalem,
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  Speaker 1: something happened. and the man who had been quietly helping
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  Speaker 1: himself decided he was finished. Bethany, a house, a meal,
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  Speaker 1: and a woman with an alabaster jar. Mary comes in
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  Speaker 1: carrying pure nard, an imported perfume, the kind of possession
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  Speaker 1: a family holds as security. She breaks the jar and
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  Speaker 1: pours it out on Jesus, and John says the whole
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  Speaker 1: house filled with the fragrance of it. In today's terms,
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  Speaker 1: roughly a year of wages, gone in a single gesture
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  Speaker 1: that could never be undone. You cannot unpoor perfume. And
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  Speaker 1: a voice in the room objects. Why was this ointment
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  Speaker 1: not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?
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  Speaker 2: It is Judas.
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  Speaker 1: And on the surface, it is the most reasonable sentence
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  Speaker 1: spoken in the room. That is what makes it worth noticing.
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  Speaker 1: It is not wicked-sounding. It is not obviously sinister. It
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  Speaker 1: sounds like stewardship. It sounds like a man who cares
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  Speaker 1: about the poor. John, writing years later, tells us what
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  Speaker 1: was underneath it. Now watch the order of events, because
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  Speaker 1: the Gospels put them side by side. Matthew tells the
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  Speaker 1: story of the anointing at Bethany, and in the very
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  Speaker 1: next sentence, then one of the twelve, whose name was
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  Speaker 1: Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests. extravagant love poured out.
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  Speaker 1: And then a man walked out of the room and
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  Speaker 1: went looking for a buyer. The text gives us that sequence.
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  Speaker 1: It does not tell us the mechanism, and we will
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  Speaker 1: not pretend it does. But it is a strange and
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  Speaker 1: sobering fact that the last recorded thing Judas saw before
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  Speaker 1: he sold Jesus was someone giving him everything for nothing
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  Speaker 1: in return. And then he asks his question. What are
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  Speaker 1: you willing to give me if I deliver him over
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  Speaker 1: to you?
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  Speaker 2: Stop there.
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  Speaker 1: In all four Gospels, across three years of recorded conversation
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  Speaker 1: with the twelve, this is the only moment a disciple
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  Speaker 1: asks what Jesus is worth. He did not even set
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  Speaker 1: the figure himself. He asked them to appraise the Son
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  Speaker 1: of God, and then he waited for the number. A
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  Speaker 1: word of care before we go further, because it matters.
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  Speaker 1: For centuries, this man's name has been used as a
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  Speaker 1: weapon against the Jewish people, and the text gives no
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  Speaker 1: room for that whatsoever. Every man in this account is Jewish.
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  Speaker 1: The eleven who stayed were Jewish. The women who went
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  Speaker 1: to the tomb were Jewish. The one being sold was Jewish.
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  Speaker 1: This is the story of one man's choice, and it
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  Speaker 1: belongs to him alone. So they weighed out the number,
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  Speaker 1: thirty pieces of silver, and in that number is a
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  Speaker 1: detail that turns the stomach once you know it. Go
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  Speaker 1: back to the Law of Moses, Exodus, chapter 21. In
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  Speaker 1: the case law governing damages, there is a provision about
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  Speaker 1: an ox that gores. If the animal kills a free man,
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  Speaker 1: one penalty applies, but if the ox gores a slave...
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  Speaker 1: a servant, someone else's property, the law fixes the compensation
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  Speaker 1: owed to the owner. He shall give to their master
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  Speaker 1: thirty shekels of silver. Thirty shekels was the statutory value
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  Speaker 1: of a dead slave, not a ransom for a teacher,
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  Speaker 1: not the going rate for a wanted man, the fixed
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  Speaker 1: legal compensation for property that had been destroyed. And the
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  Speaker 1: number appears one more time, centuries before that night, in
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  Speaker 1: a passage that is almost unbearable in its precision. The
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  Speaker 1: prophet Zechariah, playing the part of a rejected shepherd, asks
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  Speaker 1: the people for his wages, and they weigh out thirty
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  Speaker 1: pieces of silver. And the Lord says to him, Throw
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  Speaker 1: it to the potter, the lordly price at which I
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  Speaker 1: was valued by them. Hear the contempt in that phrase,
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  Speaker 1: the lordly price. It is sarcasm, written into scripture centuries
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  Speaker 1: in advance, and Zechariah is told to take the silver
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  Speaker 1: and throw it into the house of the Lord, to
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  Speaker 1: the potter. Three details, the amount, the house of the Lord,
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  Speaker 1: the potter. Matthew records that Judas, in the end, threw
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  Speaker 1: the silver down in the temple, and that the priests
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  Speaker 1: used it to buy the potter's field, every one of
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  Speaker 1: the three.
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  Speaker 2: And Matthew does something here that deserves an honest word
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  Speaker 2: because most videos on this subject quietly skip it. When
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  Speaker 2: he cites the prophecy, he attributes it to Jeremiah, though
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  Speaker 2: the wording we have just read is Zechariah's. This is
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  Speaker 2: a genuine question that serious scholars have worked on for
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  Speaker 2: a long time, and there are real answers. One is
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  Speaker 2: that Matthew is making a composite citation. weaving Zechariah's silver
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  Speaker 2: together with Jeremiah's potter and Jeremiah's purchased field from chapters 18, 19,
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  Speaker 2: and 32, and naming the more prominent prophet as the source,
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  Speaker 2: a normal practice in his world. Another is that in
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  Speaker 2: ancient Jewish ordering, Jeremiah stood first in the prophetic collection,
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  Speaker 2: so his name could serve as the label for the
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  Speaker 2: whole scroll. There are other proposals. The question is still discussed.
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  Speaker 2: We are not going to pretend it is simple, and
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  Speaker 2: we are not going to pretend it is fatal. It
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  Speaker 2: is simply honest to tell you both that the prophecy
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  Speaker 2: is startlingly precise, and that the citation has a history
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  Speaker 2: worth knowing. The bargain was struck. And from that moment,
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  Speaker 2: Matthew says, Judas began looking for a good opportunity to
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  Speaker 2: hand him over. Every betrayal has a number attached to it.
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  Speaker 2: Most of us never say ours out loud. One man
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  Speaker 2: in this story named a price for Jesus. Hold on
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  Speaker 2: to that, because before the week is over, we are
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  Speaker 2: going to find out what Jesus named for him. The
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  Speaker 2: deal was already done. The silver was already counted. And
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  Speaker 2: that is the state of things when Judas walks into
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  Speaker 2: an upper room and takes his place at the table.
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  Speaker 2: Everything that happens in this room, Jesus does knowing. John
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  Speaker 2: says it before the meal even begins. During supper, when
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  Speaker 2: the devil had already put it into the heart of
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  Speaker 2: Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him. Already. The arrangement
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  Speaker 2: is made, the money is somewhere, the plan is running,
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  Speaker 2: and then John writes one of the strangest sentences in scripture. Jesus,
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  Speaker 2: knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands,
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  Speaker 2: and that he had come from God and was going
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  Speaker 2: back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his
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  Speaker 2: outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.
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  Speaker 2: He knew everything was his, and he knelt down. He
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  Speaker 2: went around that table with a basin, doing the work
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  Speaker 2: of the lowest servant in the house, washing the road
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  Speaker 2: off the feet of men who would all abandon him
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  Speaker 2: before morning. And he did not skip one. There is
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  Speaker 2: no line in the gospel that says he passed by
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  Speaker 2: a man. The hands that would be paid for the
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  Speaker 2: arrest were held that night by the one being sold.
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  Speaker 2: Then he straightened up and said it. Truly, truly, I
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  Speaker 2: say to you, one of you will betray me. Now
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  Speaker 2: watch what happens next. because it is the detail that
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  Speaker 2: changes this entire story, and almost nobody stops on it.
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  Speaker 2: They did not look at Judas. Matthew says they were
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  Speaker 2: very sorrowful and began to say to him, one after another,
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  Speaker 2: Is it I, Lord? John says the disciples looked at
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  Speaker 2: one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. Not one of
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  Speaker 2: them turned toward the man with the money bag. Not
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  Speaker 2: one of them thought, of course. Every man at that
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  Speaker 2: table went inward and searched himself first. three years, same roads,
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  Speaker 2: same fires, same bread, same arguments about who was greatest.
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  Speaker 2: And on the last night, not one of the eleven
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  Speaker 2: suspected him, which means something we almost never say out
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  Speaker 2: loud about Jesus. He never exposed him, not once. He
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  Speaker 2: knew from the beginning he had every right on any
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  Speaker 2: day of those three years to name him in front
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  Speaker 2: of the others, to protect the group, to warn them,
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  Speaker 2: to be vindicated later. He never did it. The warnings
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  Speaker 2: he gave were real, but they were veiled and private
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  Speaker 2: and pointed at one conscience only. One of you is
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  Speaker 2: a devil. No name attached. You are clean, but not
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  Speaker 2: all of you. No name attached. Judas heard every one
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  Speaker 2: of them. Nobody else knew who they were for. He
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  Speaker 2: carried that knowledge alone for three years and let a
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  Speaker 2: thief keep his good name to the last night of
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  Speaker 2: his life. Think about what that cost. Every time the
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  Speaker 2: group divided the money, Jesus knew. Every time Judas spoke
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  Speaker 2: up about the poor, Jesus knew. He sat across from
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  Speaker 2: him at how many meals, on how many evenings, holding
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  Speaker 2: a thing that would have ended the man standing in
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  Speaker 2: that group in a single sentence, and he never spent it.
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  Speaker 2: Not to protect himself, not to warn the others, not
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  Speaker 2: even to make the record clear for later. There is
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  Speaker 2: a kind of love that exposes a person for their
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  Speaker 2: own good, and there is a kind that covers them
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  Speaker 2: until the last possible moment to leave room for them
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  Speaker 2: to turn. This was the second kind, and the eleven
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  Speaker 2: blank faces around that table are the proof of it.
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  Speaker 2: And then at the table he does one more thing.
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  Speaker 2: They ask him who it is, and he says, It
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  Speaker 2: is he to whom I will give this morsel of
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  Speaker 2: bread when I have dipped it. And he dips the
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  Speaker 2: bread and hands it to Judas. Understand what that gesture
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  Speaker 2: was at that table. Handing the dipped morsel to a
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  Speaker 2: guest was not an accusation. It was an act of honor,
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  Speaker 2: the host singling out someone for favor, the peace you
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  Speaker 2: give to the person you want to bless. In the
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  Speaker 2: very moment of identifying his betrayer, Jesus made the sign
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  Speaker 2: of identification a kindness. If you were sitting further down
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  Speaker 2: that table, you did not see an unmasking. You saw
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  Speaker 2: the teacher giving Judas the best peace. His final public
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  Speaker 2: act toward Judas was courtesy. And then John records the
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  Speaker 2: darkest sentence in the chapter. Then, after he had taken
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  Speaker 2: the morsel, Satan entered into him. That is the moment
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  Speaker 2: the door closes, not from the outside, but from within.
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  Speaker 2: And listen to what Jesus says to him. Not a rebuke,
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  Speaker 2: not an exorcism, not a plea. He says, what you
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  Speaker 2: are going to do, do quickly. He did not hold
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  Speaker 2: him by force. He released him. And that is the
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  Speaker 2: deepest thing in this whole story. Love that will not
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  Speaker 2: chain you to the room. The door was never locked.
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  Speaker 2: Judas walked through it. The others at the table did
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  Speaker 2: not understand. Some thought Jesus was telling him to buy
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  Speaker 2: something for the feast or to give something to the poor,
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  Speaker 2: which tells you again that even now, in the last minutes,
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  Speaker 2: his cover was intact. And then John writes six words
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  Speaker 2: and stops. So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he
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  Speaker 2: immediately went out, and it was night. John is a
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  Speaker 2: careful writer. He is not telling us the time, being
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  Speaker 2: known completely and covered anyway. That is not weakness. Most
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  Speaker 2: of us have never been loved that way. He washed
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  Speaker 2: his feet. He handed him the bread. He let him go.
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  Speaker 2: Even then, the door was open. There was one more
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  Speaker 2: thing Jesus would say to him. One word, in a garden.
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  Speaker 2: in the dark, and it is not the word anyone expects.
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  Speaker 2: The olive grove across the Kidron Valley, torches moving up
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  Speaker 2: the slope, a crowd with swords and clubs sent from
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  Speaker 2: the chief priests and the elders, and out in front
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  Speaker 2: of them, a man they all knew was coming. The
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  Speaker 2: sign had been arranged in advance, and the sign was affection.
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  Speaker 2: The one I will kiss is the man. Seize him.
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  Speaker 2: He could have pointed. He could have said the name.
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  Speaker 2: He chose the gesture a disciple used to greet his rabbi,
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  Speaker 2: the mark of belonging, of loyalty, of a student honoring
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  Speaker 2: his teacher. He came up to Jesus and said, greetings rabbi,
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  Speaker 2: and he kissed him. Luke records what Jesus said to that. Judas,
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  Speaker 2: would you betray the son of man with a kiss?
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Not a shout, a question with his name in it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: And then Matthew gives us the last word Jesus ever
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: spoke to him. Friend, do what you came for. That
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: word deserves care, because it is often mishandled in both directions.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: The Greek is hetairos, comrade, associate, fellow. It is not philos,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: the warm word for a beloved friend, and we should
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: not pretend it is. Matthew uses hetairos elsewhere for men
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: being addressed directly in the moment of their wrongdoing, the
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: grumbling worker in the vineyard, the guest without a wedding garment.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: It is the word of a man confronting another man honestly,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: and that is exactly the point. It is not warmth
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: pretending nothing is happening, and it is not the fury
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: the moment deserved. Standing in a torch-lit garden with an
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: armed mob at his back, Judas is spoken to as
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: a man. confronted, without cruelty, while his lips were still
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: on the face he had sold. Even here, no exposure.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Even here, no curse. And then, something happens that most
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: readers rush past. John says, Jesus, knowing everything that was
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: going to happen to him, came forward and asked them,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Whom do you seek? They said, Jesus of Nazareth. He said,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I am he. And John records this, When Jesus said
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: to them, I am he, they drew back and fell
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: to the ground. An entire arresting party on the floor
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: of a garden. Whatever else was happening that night, this
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: was not an overpowering. He had the power to walk
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: out of that grove, and he used it to ask
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: a question instead. He waited on the ground he had
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: chosen until the men on the ground got up, and
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: then he let them take him. The arrest was not
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: something that happened to him. It was something he permitted.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Which brings us back to a question we left hanging.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Judas asked, what will you give me? And men weighed
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: out the fixed price of a dead slave and put
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: it in his hand. Jesus was asked for nothing and
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: he gave everything. One man appraised God and settled for
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: 30 pieces of silver. God never named a price for
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: the man. He never said what Judas was worth, never
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: weighed him, never set a figure on him at all.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: He gave him three years, a place at the table,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: clean feet, the honored piece of bread, one word in
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: a garden. And then, within hours, he paid in full
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: for a world that still had Judas in it. That
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: is the exchange at the center of this story. One valuation, offered.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: One valuation, refused. But there was another man in that
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: garden who was about to fail him, badly, publicly, three
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: times over, before the sun came up. And what happens
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: to those two men next is the entire reason this
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: story is in your Bible. Two men betrayed Jesus that night.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: One took silver and handed him to an armed crowd.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: The other stood by a fire in a courtyard and
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: swore three times with oaths in front of a servant
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: girl that he had never met the man. Both of
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: them had promised hours earlier that they never would. Both
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: of them collapsed before morning. The difference between them was
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: not the size of the failure. Watch where each of
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: them went next. Matthew says that when Judas saw that
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind. The Greek word
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: is metamelomai and it carries real anguish. We should be
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: careful here because this word can carry genuine change of
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: heart in other places in Matthew. So we will only
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: claim what the text actually gives us. Matthew never uses
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: the language of repentance for Judas and no gospel records
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: him turning back toward Jesus. because look at the direction
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: he walked. He went to the chief priests. He brought
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: back the thirty pieces of silver and said, I have sinned,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: for I have betrayed innocent blood. That is a confession,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: out loud, to religious authority, naming the sin exactly. And
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: here is their answer. What is that to us? See
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: to it yourself. A broken man walked into the temple
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: carrying blood money and grief, and the temple had nothing
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: for him. No absolution, no counsel, no mercy, only a
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: shrug and a door. He had sold the only one
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: who would have received him, and then he brought his
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: confession to the people who could not. He threw the
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: silver down in the sanctuary and went out. The Gospels
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: tell us he died by his own hand. Matthew says
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: he went and hanged himself. Acts describes the aftermath in
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: the field, bought with the money, in different terms. There
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: is a traditional reconciliation of the two accounts, and it
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: is what it is, a reconciliation, not a proof. We
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: are not going to spend the weight of this story
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: on the mechanics of a man's death. The tragedy is
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: in the despair, not the method, and Jesus' own words
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: about him are severe. It would have been better for
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: that man if he had not been born. That is
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: the language of woe, the strongest form of lament the
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: scriptures have for the horror of an act. and we
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: will not soften it. But neither will we do what
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Scripture refuses to do and hand down a final verdict
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: on a man's soul. That judgment was never given to us.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Now the other road. Peter, after the third denial, heard
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: a rooster and caught the Lord's eye across a courtyard
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: and went outside and wept bitterly. That is where the
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: two roads look identical. Both men were shattered. Both knew
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: exactly what they had done. But when it was over,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Peter went back to the others. And days later, he
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: was on a shoreline at dawn, and there was a
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: charcoal fire burning, the same kind of fire he had
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: warmed his hands at while he denied him, and breakfast,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: and three questions. Do you love me? Do you love me?
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Do you love me? One for each denial. And after
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: each one, not a punishment. A commission. Feed my sheep.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Same night. Same collapse. Opposite directions. One man took his
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: guilt to the people who could only condemn him. The
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: other took it back to the only person who could
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: forgive him. And that is where this stops being about Judas.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Because you did not come here to find out about
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: a man who has been dead for two thousand years.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Underneath the question is one most people never say out loud.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: If he knows what I am going to do, why
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: would he still call me? He called a man he
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: knew would sell him. He called a man he knew
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: would deny him. He prayed all night, and then he
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: said both their names. The question is not whether you
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: will fail him. You will. Everyone in this story did,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: all of them, every one, before the sun came up.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: The question is where you take it when you do.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Because he never stopped leaving the door open. Not through
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the stealing. Not through the bargain in the priest's chamber.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Not at the basin, or the bread, or the kiss
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: in the garden. The tragedy of Judas is not that
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: a door was shut against him. It is that he
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: walked out through an open one and never turned around.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Peter turned around. That is the whole distance between those
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: two men. The priests picked up the silver from the
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: sanctuary floor and they had a problem. It was blood money.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: It could not go into the treasury. So they took
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: 30 pieces of silver and bought a field with it.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And Matthew tells us exactly what they bought it for.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: to bury strangers and foreigners, outsiders, the people who died
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: in Jerusalem with no family and no plot and no
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: claim on anyone, the ones the temple had no room for.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: The money that purchased a betrayal finally purchased a resting
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: place for strangers. Even Judas's silver ended by serving people
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: who had nowhere else to belong. If this video blessed you,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: like and subscribe. On this channel, we explore the deep
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Bible mysteries. You can also become a member of this
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: channel and go deeper with us. And before you go,
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: tell us what you learned in this video. And you
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: can check out this channel for more videos that will
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: bless you.