(machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) (machine whirring) - I don't wanna use the mic, but I will. Okay, so yesterday we talked about, and Tuesday was ultimately, Jesus spent his time teaching in the temple courts, and I describe it as he's shooting arrows at the leaders, as he's convicting them of their hypocrisy, their complacency, their leading Israel astray.

And subsequently, they begin ramping up this hatred and this plot to kill him. So we come to today, our passages in Mark chapter 14, if you can turn there, verses 10 through 11. Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.

And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him. The parallel passage is in Matthew chapter 26, I'll read that. Then one of the 12, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?" And they paid him 30 pieces of silver.

And from that moment, he sought an opportunity to betray him. When I read Mark chapter 14 in verse 11, when it says, "And when they heard it, they were glad." I was trying to think of the mindset that the leaders are currently in. They're obviously plotting to kill him.

And this kind of softball comes right in front of them, and they are ecstatic that this disciple of Jesus would come to them and give them an opportunity to capture Jesus and to ultimately arrest him. And we know the rest to kill him. And we don't get all the necessarily details of what that conversation was.

In Luke, you can read it later. He does give us a little bit more details that they conferred together. But in terms of specifics of how they strategized, how they thought out this plan to betray Jesus, all we get later on is that Judas gives them a sign that he'll go ahead and kiss the one who they should capture.

And like I said, there's an air of excitement that I can imagine that these leaders are pumped up. Like, this is our time. This is our time to get this guy. And we don't often think too deeply about Judas and what he did. And typically, it's in this context when we get to really reflect on what the betrayal meant and what Judas did.

I had a couple questions while reviewing this. It's like, who was Judas? We know he was a disciple. And why would he do this to Jesus was kind of the things that I was thinking about. Judas was handpicked, one of the 12. He was with Jesus for over three and a half years, or three plus years.

He was involved in the thick of things in ministry. He spent time worshiping with Jesus. They slept together. They ate together. And I was thinking of that kind of relationship and it kind of pushed me towards, how can I relate to that or kind of understand what that process was.

And I went to my experiences in missions. And some of you have been out to China. Some of you have been out to short-term missions. And there's an air of excitement and just the bonding of people on the teams, experiencing these kinds of things, living together, being focused together.

And it's a short-term picture of my experiences was the longest was about three weeks. And we were intertwined with our teams. And we ate together, we slept together, we did ministry together. And that's what I picture as Jesus and his disciples are going through the ministry. This is their experience.

This is, they lived, ate and breathed this stuff. And we can assume that the life of the 12 was like that. And again, for over three years, but somewhere along that line, we can figure that Judas began to harden his heart. We see kind of glimpses of it when the woman washes Jesus' feet, pours perfume.

And he's first to say, hey, that money could have been spent somewhere else. I'm poor. So we get a little taste of his selfishness, his concerns. Obviously it's gonna boil over, but I was reminded in Genesis 4, 7, where it talks about Cain and his desires. And it says, if you do well, will you not be accepted?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. So I wondered, how did Judas get to the point of this in his life, that he would sin in this way and be so treacherous? And I was thinking, what does that teach us?

I don't think most of us kind of can necessarily relate to what Judas did in his betrayal. But what I've been kind of reflecting on about this week, is about sin and my own sin and the sin of my kind, mankind. Thinking about how bad is it? How bad is my sin?

You know, Isaiah 6, we know, Isaiah comes across the throne room and sees a glimpse of God. And his response is, woe is me. I'm ruined. I'm a man of unclean lips and I come from a people of unclean lips. You know, I don't necessarily betray Jesus like Judas did.

Do I? It's easy to disassociate ourselves from that event, where Judas betrays Jesus. And why is it so detestable what he did? And I wanna kind of give you a comparison. You know, if we don't understand the betrayal aspect of why it's so bad, then we lose out of the whole meaning of what this event kind of take place in.

So kind of what did Jesus do for Judas? And what did Judas do for Jesus? Jesus chose him to be a disciple, loved him, washed his feet, poured himself out to his disciples, which included him. He showed him who he was. He was by his teaching, by enacting miracles.

He was a firsthand eyewitness of all these things that Jesus was doing. And we look to Judas, what did he do? He ultimately rejected him, betrayed him to the people who wanted to kill him. He wanted the worldly riches. And I wanna try to encourage you to reflect on this today.

How am I like Judas? You know, ask that question, how am I like Judas? And how bad is sin? Like I said, this is what I've been reflecting on this week. And I've been very scatterbrained in my mind, just meditating on how bad is sin. And it's really caused me to realize I'm pretty vile.

And that includes all of us. And why do I say this? Let me kind of set this up. So forgive me if this is too much later, but I will say it now. So some of you know what I do for a living. Some of you may not. I work in computers and criminal investigations.

And what that includes is I look at people's computers. I look at where they went on the internet, what they downloaded, what is stored on their computer. So pretty much I get to do a bunch of CSI on people's computers. And part of my job is to work sexual, child sexual exploitation cases.

So I'm gonna share a hypothetical situation with you. So imagine, this may be something I experienced. Imagine you come across a video on someone's computer. You see a little girl, she's maybe first or second grade. Most likely she's unclothed, being abused by multiple adults. You focus on her face and see that during this abuse, she's weeping.

She's trying to cover herself. She can't do anything to prevent it. What is your emotional reaction to this? Obviously it's heartbrokenness. It's pity. It's anger, sympathy. It is, you know, the emotional gamut, right? I was pretty, well, hypothetically I was pretty angry. And I was, to say plainly, pissed off at people doing this kind of thing.

But when I evaluated my emotions, it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. That's how bad sin is. This is what kind of people I come from. Isaiah six, when Isaiah says, "I come from a people of unclean lips," that is what we are. And we don't experience this on a day-to-day basis in terms of thinking about how bad our sin is.

It's an inner core corruption. And whenever I hear things describing sin, cosmic treason, rebelliousness, betrayal, I don't necessarily associate myself with those kind of things. But they are in the big scheme of things. If we lack an understanding of these dark sins that are terrible, are an indication of our corruptness, we lack an understanding of where we stand before our God.

So, you know, and foolish man tries to justify everything. And we come before a holy God, and if we lack an understanding of how holy God is and how bad we are, we ultimately cheapen what it costs. You know, we get justifiably rightly angry about wretchedness and sin, and especially the example I gave you.

But God sees our sin and seethes with wrath and anger. You know, what kind of anger and wrath do you think God held towards us for this kind of wretched sin? You know, oh, what magnitude of our sin that we justify, that we don't really ponder. And we don't necessarily ponder how high God is.

And I was listening to a sermon this week, and the pastor said something that kind of stuck with me. God would be gracious even if he sent us to hell for a thousand years. And I was just thinking about that. He would. Hell is an eternal place of wrath, of torment, of punishment.

And if we just stayed there a thousand years, he'd still be gracious. That's how holy our God is, that he would punish sin for eternity because it's so bad. Ultimately, what does this boil down to? It boils down to that anger that I had, a minuscule aspect of anger that I believe is justified, that I believe is emotionally right.

Magnify that by exponentially what God and what we come before God with, our sins. And ultimately why we are here, because the Father chose to send all that anger and wrath upon one person. It's really, when you really start pondering the gospel, it's unimaginable. I don't get it that God would be this kind.

He's too grand of a scale to understand, but how lovely is our Savior? Tomorrow we're gonna go through the garden and he says, "Take this cup from me." What is this cup? It's the wrath that he knows is coming. God's anger meant punishment that he needs to accept. So I just wanna encourage you to think about our sin.

I really think how bad is it? And get to a place where you understand how lowly and vile and corrupt our sin is compared to how holy God is. And then you will begin to understand and we will understand just what kind of cost it was for Christ to take this.

And I really thought this song, just glorious days, the first two lines, "One day when sin was as black as could be, Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin." And it really reminded me like how black is sin. Like, I just wanna encourage you, thinking of Judas's betrayal, yes.

He betrayed Jesus. This was all in God's sovereign plan. However, when we reflect on how do we take this personally, I wanna encourage you, just think your sinfulness and our sinfulness and how that will lead us to Friday and ultimately Sunday. So let's pray. Father, thank you for