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If God Planned the Cross, Was Judas Responsible? · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
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  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or
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  gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what we bring to your table today might
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  add some spice to your life welcome back to another episode of relish i'm your
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  host roan miller and this is pastor don patterson don how are you doing we're
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  doing good we're doing good yes it's getting close to spring all the time. Yeah.
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  So who couldn't be doing well? Little warmer. Every day. Yeah.
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  Yeah. We look forward to warm. Yeah.
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  We got spoiled a little bit. You know, we had one day that it was 70 degrees
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  and I thought, hmm, boy, we could use some more of those.
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  And then, you know, the rest of Iowa weather comes in.
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  You think spring and summer has already come and then it drops back down.
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  Think about Iowa weather, you know, you aren't bored.
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  One day it's cold and one day it's hot and then it gets cold again,
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  then it rains, then it snows. Yeah. It usually doesn't snow when it's hot.
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  Usually. Yeah. Right. But it's Iowa. Yeah. We had.
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  Yeah, some snow and then it's melted at nine in the morning the next day. Yep, that's true.
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  And then I went out and pruned my apple trees. Oh, yeah. Got them half done. Yeah.
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  Oh, well. That's fun. That's Iowa. Snow in the morning, prune in the afternoon.
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  Yeah. Right. Such is life.
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  So, how are you doing? I've been doing well. I've been busy.
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  Basketball just ended. So, moving into busy spring season.
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  Yes. About it. No doubt about it. Graduation, soccer, all that. Yes, graduation.
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  Okay. Looking at your life so far, where do you think God is leading you? Mr. Senior.
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  Well, I recently made my college decision, actually.
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  This is news. Um, yeah, I, I haven't even had the time to talk with Don about
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  it cause he's been out of town, but, um, uh, I was pretty patient and wanted to golf.
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  And so kind of working through that and, um, several schools were offered or
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  were interested or whatever. And, um, yeah.
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  Kind of got it narrowed down and then was pretty patient. I think the Lord opened some doors.
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  So I'm actually thinking I'm going to go to Northwestern and Orange City and
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  golf there, which is rival school of where my brother goes.
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  Yeah, I was going to say, we've got to be a heads on station at home, you know? Yeah.
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  Oh, yeah. No competition among the Miller boys. No, not at all.
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  That's cool. That's cool.
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  I look forward to it. know some have some friends up there so oh you do okay
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  yeah and i'm sure you'll make some yeah yeah yeah definitely good deal yeah yeah and uh.
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  Had a good time at Hillcrest. That was good to have all those questions.
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  And look, maybe to have somebody, some surprise guest on the broadcast here.
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  Special guest coming up. Lord willing.
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  A couple episodes from now, hopefully. But yeah, stay tuned for that.
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  So we, as Don already mentioned, our last episode was at Hillcrest.
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  And all the students there submitted questions that they had for Pastor Don.
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  And so now we are going to work through the other.
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  And you assured me there were so many that we wouldn't
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  have a problem oh yeah okay don i mean
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  don was keeping his answer short in that episode and
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  so even even getting through
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  it like probably the most questions we might have ever covered in a we did yeah
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  and not feel bad in case somebody wanted a deeper discussion on some of those
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  questions uh that'd be good sometime maybe to go into those a little bit deeper
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  but you know everybody was sitting right there you know waiting Is he going to answer my question?
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  Yeah, we probably got about 3% of the student body's questions answered. Oh, wow.
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  Wow. 5%, I don't know. Quite a few questions then. Okay, good. That's good.
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  Yeah. So we'll start it off here with, did Judas have free will when he betrayed Jesus?
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  I think we need to consider that, yes, he did have free will. I think he did bend to...
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  The temptation to do what maybe, I mean, there's two schools of thought.
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  One school of thought would say he bent to the temptation of trying to force
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  Jesus to be the king he was expecting Jesus to be.
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  And so by betraying him, that he would force him to open up his hand as king
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  of king and lord of lords and banish the Romans and all that good stuff.
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  So less of a temptation of money and more of right being he was expecting.
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  Okay. And the other is just, you know, the sheer, I mean, a lot of times in
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  a popular organization, there's somebody who's always just a little jealous of what's going on.
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  And so they betray the guy on top. And I think some of that was at play with Judas.
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  And he was the, I guess he was known. We see in, I believe it's chapter 12 of John,
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  where Mary anoints Jesus in those first verses of chapter 12,
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  and he was known to the disciples of being a crook, even though he was given,
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  I guess by Jesus, the role of keeping the money.
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  And you always say, well, then why would Jesus have Judas keep the money if
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  he knew he was going to steal it.
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  And I think that says something about Jesus, that even knowing Judas's heart,
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  Jesus put him in a situation where he could choose beyond the temptation.
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  So yes, I still go back to the very first part of that question, did he have free will?
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  And I say, yeah, I believe he had free will, and he could have done something
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  different and chose not to.
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  And, uh, I, I know a lot of people who deal with temptation,
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  we sort of move towards the easy way because we're already in that groove already. And, uh,
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  I think really the mission of Jesus Christ was to give us an option out of the
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  normal root of temptation to follow him.
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  So when we talk about discipleship and those kinds of things,
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  it's in our discipleship that we choose the way of Jesus in light of our normal
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  human reactions to the world around us so that we do good to those who persecute you.
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  You go ahead and turn the other cheek to the guy who whacks you up the one side.
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  Those are choices that we make in our discipleship.
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  And you know the easy path and you know the narrow way. Those are all in chapter 7 of Matthew.
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  Those are choices to be disciples and to
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  work in in discipleship ways so yes
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  i think judas had free will in addition to that guess what so do we we can either
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  do what's easy to come easy that comes to the flesh or we can do the hard thing
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  that is the kingdom thing that we would recognize is Jesus doing?
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  We have those choices, just like Judas did. So I would go, yes, Judas had free choice.
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  Yes, he followed that human nature. I think that's what basically it follows up.
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  Then, you know, he takes his own life because he messed up.
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  Yeah now that being said if you're
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  in one of those situations where you say there's no other way out
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  don't take that one jesus is the answer and you know what sometimes we just
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  need to surrender to his will and uh find help get out of that groove that natural
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  human groove that takes us to destruction.
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  And Jesus is the way out of that groove. Nice. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Why was Judas needed in the betrayal of Jesus?
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  Well, we wouldn't have the cross without that betrayal. Somebody had to do it.
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  And what's interesting is he was even prophesied.
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  Yeah. Uh, and so that being the case, it had to happen.
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  Right. It was according to scripture had to happen.
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  Uh, and Jesus knew, I think Jesus knew from the onset. I mean, think about it.
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  If you're putting a crew together to follow you, uh, you're going to sort of
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  sift through all of them, right.
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  And, and, and, uh, vet them if you will. Right. And you would look that Jesus
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  couldn't have helped, knowing everything else that he knew, that Judas was that
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  kind of character. There's just no way he didn't know.
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  So to imagine Jesus intentionally putting Judas into the Twelve—.
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  Is almost mind-blowing, because that's not what we would do.
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  We get 12 guys who think like us, who, if we're at least smart enough,
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  they wouldn't all be yes-men, but they could also give us a bigger scope of
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  what is going into every situation.
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  Jesus, then, would have been very much aware that Judas was not only not a yes-man,
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  but was contrary to what the kingdom was wanting to do through Jesus Christ on the cross.
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  And the cross wouldn't have happened without Judas. Yeah, at all, right?
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  So it could be that Jesus just saw that in the future as being a way to make
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  the cross come about so that we would have the freedom we are given through the cross. Yeah.
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  Yeah, Jesus knew. Yeah.
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  In Numbers, I have it as 1532. A man is picking up sticks on the Sabbath and
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  gets stoned because God commanded them to stone him.
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  Did God essentially command murder then?
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  Is this different? Is he...
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  Okay, so what we're talking about is the beginning of a time when God is calling
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  out a people, and he is trying to train this people not to sin.
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  And obviously, this guy didn't take it very seriously.
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  Okay. A man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him
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  gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly,
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  and they kept him in custody because it was not clear what they should be done to him.
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  Then the Lord said to Moses, the man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.
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  So the whole assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death as the Lord commanded Moses.
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  You know, this isn't the first time this has happened.
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  Well, yeah, this would be the first time it happened.
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  It will happen again at I, when the guy picked up things that he wasn't supposed
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  to pick up, took him home, stuck him in his own tent.
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  Oh, yeah. And so there's several instances that God says, okay,
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  this person sinned and they must pay the ultimate price for that sin.
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  And the flip side of this is, and it wasn't murder.
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  Everybody who was part of the assembly would be part of the stoning.
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  Yeah, because the whole assembly took him outside the camp. The whole assembly
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  must stone him outside the camp.
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  And so, basically, what God is establishing here is, I ain't kidding, Claus.
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  I ain't kidding. I said, don't work on the Sabbath. I ain't kidding.
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  So, I mean, we have a hard time thinking of it in these kinds of terms.
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  But if we are looking at the text, we're realizing that God is trying to form a people.
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  And it seems like, from my reading of the text, by forming that people and doing
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  things like this at the very beginning, they get the sense, oh,
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  oh, I think God's really serious on this one.
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  And it sounds, man, picking up sticks?
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  That sounds like somebody doing gardening. I feel like I might have done that
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  on a podcast. Yeah, well, yeah.
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  So then, if that's the case, aren't you glad we don't do stonings on Sundays?
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  You know, it's basically saying, as I look at this, this passage,
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  and then later what happens at I and a couple other places like that, God's serious.
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  God's serious about saying, I want you to be my people.
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  I want you to honor those 10 commandments and live them out in daily life.
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  It's not just what you want to have done. It's reflecting God's will to be done.
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  And I think maybe that's something we aren't living into quite enough today.
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  I mean, this is a situation where they knew good and well that God did not want
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  work to be done on Sabbath.
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  And the Pharisees would take that to extremes by the time of Jesus.
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  That being the case, how do you get it across that this group of people are
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  going to reflect God's values?
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  Unless there's consequences to when you don't live out those values.
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  So I think God's trying to get it through that, hey, folks, this was not a suggestion.
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  This has implications. I want you to live this way. Right.
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  And so now here at the beginning, we're going to make sure that happens. Yeah.
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  This wasn't part of the original question, but how does that idea of stoning
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  change when we shift to the New Testament?
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  Like, take the woman, is it? John 8. Yeah, yeah. Caught in adultery, right? Yeah.
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  Stephen. Yeah. Acts chapter 7. Yeah.
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  How does that concept shift or does it not change at all? It really doesn't
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  change because that, that is the same.
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  And in John eight, that's the same consequent for adultery.
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  Uh, the, the hiccup in John eight is the fact, wait a minute,
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  wait a minute. Adultery usually involves two people, right?
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  Where's the guy? I mean, the guy's not there in John eight.
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  And you know, maybe that was to what Jesus was scrolling in the sound.
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  I mean, when he was writing.
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  But the idea of stoning is interesting because not one single stone would do the killing.
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  It would be a culmination of those stones that would actually kill.
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  And it's through the bruising, through the bleedings, the head wounds, those kinds of things.
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  But everybody is participating in the throwing.
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  And I think that's why Jesus pulls back at the end of that passage in John 8,
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  those first 12 verses, and says, He who is without sin casts the first stone.
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  Because in this passage, in Numbers 15, he says.
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  God is charging that the whole assembly, not just part of it,
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  the whole assembly, and this is God's words, the man must die,
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  the whole assembly must stone him outside the camp, not inside the camp.
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  And so the whole assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death as the Lord commanded.
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  So, in other words, it's not one person like in some other penal systems.
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  It would be a hangman or an executioner would take the brunt of taking that person's life.
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  This person's life, this person's lifeblood is on everybody's hands.
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  Yeah. And so that flips it and says, you know, this corporal punishment thing
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  that we're doing is all of our responsibility. Yeah.
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  It's not just one. So it changes things.
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  And then when you go to Stephen's stoning, we realize it's the religious group,
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  Pharisees, Sadducees, Sanhedrin, that did the stoning.
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  The reason that sets a little different in Roman times is the fact that they
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  could not do capital punishment the way the Romans did, like a crucifixion or something like that.
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  And so the stoning of the New Testament is sort of a crowd.
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  It was a method of execution used by the religious group.
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  Since they could not get a political execution, they would do a crowd mob kind
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  of thing. And that's what happens with Stephen's case, and that's basically
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  what was prepared for in John 8.
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  So it was a crowd way of getting an execution.
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  They wouldn't say, oh, that guy murdered because he threw a stone.
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  Well, they all did. Yeah.
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  So they could get around it. It was sort of a way of getting around the fact
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  that executions could only be done by Rome.
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  But the Jews just put a crowd together and started throwing stones.
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  Right. Interesting way of getting things done. Yeah. Well, historic information
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  there, too. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was full of it.
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  That's good. That's good. Good way to close the episode. Okay.
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  Yeah. That sounds all right. Thank you guys for joining us. Hope you enjoyed
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  these student-inspired questions.
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  Yes. Stay tuned. Good questions. See the rest of them get answered.
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  We'll see you next time. Lord willing.
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  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
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  ministry by sharing it with others.
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  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
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  and His calling to us in our daily lives.
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  Thank you again for joining us, and may God bless your day.