Matthew 26:14-25 | A Diabolical Betrayal

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Take your Bible with me again to the Gospel of Matthew.

The Gospel of Matthew.

Make your way to chapter twenty six.

Matthew chapter twenty-six.

Perhaps because of Shakespeare.

Most well known, perhaps the greatest betrayal remembered in modern times is Brutus and Julius Caesar.

Oh, maybe, maybe you are a historian.

And so you don't, you are an American historian, and so you don't think so much about the ancient Roman Empire.

And so maybe, maybe in your mind, the greatest betrayal is Benedict Arnold.

The American Revolution.

No?

Maybe it's that friend who turned their back on you.

That friend, maybe a family member.

That you trusted, that you loved, and all of a sudden it just pained you to the core.

Oh, now I got somewhere, didn't I?

Betrayals.

The reality is that the greatest betrayal that has ever existed is found in Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

The betrayals that we are aware of in history outside of Scripture, the betrayals that we experience in life, are mere representations of the greatest betrayal that ever took place.

And it's found in Matthew chapter 26, beginning in verse 14.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

I'd like to read verse 14 through verse 25 if you'd like to follow along in your Bible with me.

I'll be reading from the English Standard Version.

And Matthew says that then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, What will you give me if I deliver him that is Jesus over to you?

And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.

From that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.

Now on the first day of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?

He said, Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, The teacher says, My time is at hand.

I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.

The disciples did as Jesus directed them, and they prepared the Passover.

When it was evening he reclined at table with the twelve, meaning with Judas.

As they were eating, he said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me.

And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, Is it I, Lord?

He answered, He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me.

The Son of Man goes at his as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.

Judas, who would betray him, answered, Is it I, Rabbi?

And he said to him, You have said so.

Amen.

I'm gonna warn you.

That's on purpose.

I want us to feel the weight of looking at this individual that we know as Judas Isariot.

When you think about Judas, there's not a whole lot of positive.

There's going to be a lot of heaviness, a lot of darkness, a lot that just is not positive.

But I'm asking you to endure with me through that because it's only as we see that dark background that we see the jewel of the salvation that is found in Christ represented in this passage.

First, what do we know about Judas?

Well, frankly, not much.

We really don't know much about him.

His name means praise.

It's the Greek version of the Hebrew name Judah.

It's just how it's written in Greek.

And so it might be the Greek version of something like praise Yahweh, praise God, but its basic form is give praise.

Now there's this appendage to Judas called Iscario.

And some think it's, well, that's his last name.

Well, no, not really.

They didn't really have last names in that time period.

But the bottom line is we don't know what that really intends to communicate.

It might be that he was part of this group of assassins, Sakari, we often hear them called.

They were called that because of the name of a short dagger that they held, they concealed on their body to be able to take out their victims unknowingly.

There's not a whole lot of information that is available for us to tie Judas to that group.

Some think that this tells us where Judas was from, because there was a small village in the southern part of Judah that we find referenced in the book of Joshua that's called Iscariot.

So maybe it's Judas from Iscariot.

Well, that's possible, but we have no evidence that Iscariot as a community existed in the time of Jesus.

So we don't know.

Either way, it doesn't really present a positive picture of Judas.

Here is this man who is by name to give praise.

And he's either an assassin by trade, or he's from southern Judah.

And if he's from southern Judah, then that makes him the only non-Galilean among the disciples.

And if that's what's happening here, then it's showing us he doesn't fit.

He doesn't belong.

So, whichever way we understand this, that are our options here, our legitimate options, it identifies Judas as somebody who doesn't really fit with the rest of the twelve.

But that's exactly how this passage begins.

Actually, it begins at the beginning of chapter 26, where Jesus is reminding us that this is mere hours before the process begins that will lead to his crucifixion.

And in those hours, he is resting, he is relaxing, he is being ministered to at the house of Simon the leper.

And while he's at the house of Simon the Leper, he's there with his disciples.

He is receiving the worship of an unnamed woman who pours out her life savings on his head, literally.

Then, then, in that setting, one of the twelve, Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priest.

Judas Iscariot appears in every list of the apostles, except one, except in Acts chapter one.

And when he is listed amongst all of the apostles, he's always listed last.

Always with some sort of identifier that he is the one who will betray the Lord Jesus.

So he may have been a patriotic Jew hoping that Jesus would rescue Israel from Rome.

He may have been an unknown person from an unknown community.

But whatever the case, he has spent time with Jesus and come away unchanged.

Let's think about this for a moment.

First, let's think about the character of Judas that we find in this passage of Scripture.

Character of Judas that we find here.

We see if we go back up into the first section of chapter 26, we find that he is unmoved by others' worship.

Not what it says here.

So the primary movement of this text is a contrast with this unnamed woman who worships Jesus in a remarkable act of devotion.

And we remember from last time that remarkable act of devotion was equal to about a year's worth of wages.

So take whatever you earn in a typical year and pour it over the head of Jesus in an act of worship.

That identifies how much you value him.

This is either a gift that's been given to this woman or she's from a well-to-do family.

But either way, it is a valuable, valuable offering to Jesus that she anoints him with.

Now Matthew tells us that all of the disciples here objected to that act.

This could have been sold and given to the poor.

This could have helped a bunch of people.

And he had charge of the disciples' money bag.

And he used to take out of that money bag whatever he wanted to use for himself.

So that gives us some insight into Judas.

He was respected and trusted enough to have the authority, the trustworthiness to manage the group's funds.

Whatever came in, whatever was given to offer to Jesus, to support Jesus, to support the disciples as they went about and ministered to people, Judas took for himself from those funds.

He was responsible for anything about money, whether it was giving to the poor, buying food that they needed as a group, he had worked his way into the disciples' minds as one who cared about the less fortunate.

That may have been true.

He may have cared about those who had needs, but he also considered himself as having great needs.

And he helped himself.

Now at this point, it appears that the disciples had no idea what was developing in the heart of Judas.

Think about that.

Years of spending day after day with Judas, and they don't really know what's going on inside of him.

Now that probably says more about the ability within Judas to put on a good show and hide his true character than it does about the disciples' ignorance.

He showed himself to be trustworthy, and they viewed him as trustworthy.

Now back in verses 8 and 9, he was one of those whose focus was entirely on the value of the gift poured on Jesus' head, not on the worship given to him.

Nothing in that act of worship was positive to Judas.

Nothing drew his attention aside from the value in that.

Nothing drew him in.

Nothing led Judas to say, This is someone worthy of my worship.

This is the high point of Jesus' life before the long hours heading to the cross.

There is devotion, there is adoring worship given to Jesus, and Judas is oblivious.

His heart cannot see what is genuinely taking place in the heart of another person.

But there's actually an element of his character that precedes that, that is merely on display and not responding to the woman's worship.

And that is that he was unmoved by Jesus.

Who is Judas?

Who is this guy?

Well, Matthew tells us in verse 14.

He's one of the twelve.

He's not one of the 70.

He's not one of the 120.

He's one of 12.

He's one of the 12 chosen disciples.

And Matthew begins his sentence with that statement, emphasizing Judas was one of the core group of disciples.

Now think of what that means.

It means that he'd spent approximately three years hearing Jesus teach, hearing the Word of God, being fed the Word of God, the bread of life, day after day after day after day.

He'd had approximately three years of watching the blind have their sight restored.

He'd had years of watching Jesus bring hearing to the deaf, speech to those who could not speak.

He'd watched the lame walk.

He'd watched the dead raise to life.

Three years of seeing and hearing people worship and praise Jesus.

Three years of experiencing Jesus' humble service to him.

Remember, in this next night, in the Passover, Jesus washed Judas's feet.

It wasn't until after the feet washing that Judas left.

Three years of hearing the gospel proclaimed.

After all of that, and after witnessing the woman devotedly worship Jesus, what does he do?

He went to the chief priests and said, What will you give me?

He works out a deal to deliver Jesus over to the authorities.

You know, we we read into that and we think, well, he he wasn't happy with Jesus.

Maybe Jesus wasn't the revolutionary that he thought he was going to be.

Well, that that's possible.

Maybe he's not the kind of king that he thought Jesus was going to be.

That's possible.

But in the context of Matthew chapter 26, this tells us that this betrayal was driven by greed.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

He didn't get his opportunity to pilfer from the 300 denarii.

So he goes to the chief priests and he says, What will you give me?

There's nothing here that indicates any authentic trust in Jesus.

Nothing that tells us that Judas possessed faith in Jesus.

Nothing to prove to us that this is just a one-time slip-up.

In fact, the opposite is true.

This confirms the record of Scripture that Judas was unchanged by being with Jesus.

In the Gospel of Matthew, it shows us that Judas loves money more than God.

You go back to chapter 25, he is the one who refuses to work for the master.

He's the one who refuses to put his resources, his money at work for the master.

This is the untrustworthy servant.

Maybe he was like the rich young ruler who couldn't relinquish his love of money to give his all to Jesus.

Whatever the case, he's remained unchanged by being with Jesus.

And so he walks the mile or so back to Jerusalem from Bethany and barters with the priest for 30 pieces of silver, the minimum Old Testament price of a slave.

That wasn't chump change, it was a couple of months' worth of wages.

Ironically, back in verse 5, we saw that the chief priests were unwilling to arrest Jesus during the Passover because of the crowds.

But now circumstances have changed.

Judas.

Judas changes all of that.

His deceit enables them to arrest Jesus earlier than they had hoped.

Why?

Because Judas is unmoved by Jesus.

Friends, when we gather for worship on a Sunday morning, we have great music.

But we do not want you to be moved by music.

We want you to be moved by Jesus.

But we might even say that Judas was unmoved by music.

Specifically, he was unmoved by religion, by the Jewish religion, the Jewish faith.

This is Passover.

This is the highlight of the Jewish celebratory year.

This is when Israel remembered God's work of rescue and redemption, so hearts should have been turned to God during this time of religious fervor.

The city of Jerusalem swelled to over a hundred thousand people during this time of celebration.

People had to stay overnight miles away because there were too many people to stay in the city.

For those in Israel, this is a time when everything is focused on remembering what God has done.

The Passover meal had become a specific program of remembrance of God's work, but for Judas, remembrance had become mere ritual.

There's no faith, there's no trust, there's no genuine belief in Israel's faith.

If we transfer Judas to our day, this is the person who's maybe born into a moderately religious family who goes to church regularly and attends Sunday school as a child and grows up in Iwana and memorizes memory verses and is faithful in church attendance and fellowship, but is merely going through the motions.

This is the person who participates in communion on Sunday mornings but has no real relationship with the one it represents.

There's no change of heart and change of life because of Jesus.

It's simply that's what we do.

Judas lived a life that many would have loved to have had.

He saw others worship Jesus as God in the flesh.

He had the instruction of the Jewish scriptures pointing to Jesus.

He had the religious festivals fulfilled in Jesus.

He was unmoved by any of the miraculous signs.

He's unmoved.

Oh, but he's got to be a nice guy.

Some kind of nice guy he is when he's even unmoved, when others are full of sorrow.

Jesus says, I'm gonna be betrayed.

Notice verse 22, they were all very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, is it I?

Jesus, I are you talking about me?

These twelve men had been together for years.

They're here in an upper room of someone's home, celebrating God's work for their people together.

It's like they're a single family unit.

There's the master and his disciples celebrating together.

And the Passover meal, you probably know, it's a pretty elaborate thing involving several stages, several steps.

They began with a blessing by the head of the household, after which a cup of wine was passed around from which everyone would drink.

Then the food for the meal is brought in and it's placed on the table, and they begin by eating an appetizer of sorts, composed of fruits and nuts and sometimes ginger mixed with wine, and they dipped like leafy greens in it, like lettuce, you might say.

And so during that time of the meal, during that kind of appetizer phase that we would consider it, everyone's dipping into this sauce and eating it, and Jesus makes a solemn announcement.

Hey guys, one of you is gonna betray me.

And note the response.

And they were very sorrowful.

They're reacting.

Each one of them.

One of the men around that table, one of the men that they had trusted for three years, is gonna turn against Jesus.

And so one by one, they they ask Jesus if he's speaking about them.

And you you can imagine what's going on in their minds.

Wait a minute.

Is this one of those things again where he knows something we don't?

What's going on?

What?

Jesus?

Is this some sort of prophecy?

You're not serious, are you?

Oh, you mean you mean Peter's gonna screw up again?

And Jesus' response is cryptic and not especially helpful.

He says, He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me.

Well, thanks, Jesus.

We've all dipped it in the tray with you.

We're all eating the appetizer.

It's like ordering a dish of nachos or cheese sticks for your appetizer, and everybody around the table has one.

Thanks, Jesus.

You've really clarified things.

But his point was: listen, the betrayal's coming.

And you need to understand that the betrayal is not somebody unknown.

The betrayal is one of the twelve.

Notice how Matthew begins, verse 14, one of the twelve.

And verse 20, when it was evening, he reclined at the table with the twelve.

And it's one of you that will betray me.

John tells us that Jesus handed Judas a piece of bread in response to their questions.

But even then they didn't get it.

I mean, he just said, one of you that's dipped in the dish with me, and well, we've all done it, so how can it, where can we distinguish that?

Everybody's blinded to who Judas is.

And in this whole process, nobody points the finger at Judas.

Why is that?

You would think that after three years of day in and day out, of 24 hours a day with a guy, you'd get to know who he is.

Well, apparently not.

None of them suspected Judas.

He was trustworthy.

So he has yet to expose his true character or his intentions to anyone.

He has arranged the deceit.

He's arranged to have Jesus handed over.

He's received the funds for his deception, and he's now waiting for the right opportunity, but no one knows except Jesus.

And did you notice, did you notice the play on words that Matthew includes here?

The disciples are going around the table, sort of either going in order or maybe jumping back and forth.

Who knows how it went?

But they're asking, Lord, you're not talking about me, are you?

Lord, it's not it's not me, is it?

Surely, surely it's not me, Lord.

And then there's this very subtle switch when it gets to Judas.

It's not me.

Is it Rabbi?

Judas doesn't call Jesus Lord.

He calls him teacher.

In the Gospel of Matthew, someone calling Jesus Rabbi is always an indicator of unbelief.

There does not appear to be any genuine concern in his question.

It's just Judas has to play along.

He's already arranged the deal.

Now he has to keep up the deception.

No one must know.

And the other eleven disciples are full of sorrow.

And Judas is unmoved.

He feigns care and attentiveness, but is unmoved.

Now this is a section here in the Gospel of Matthew that's a transition.

Its primary focus is on Jesus.

And Matthew wants us to know how Jesus moves from public ministry now in private to his disciples, going from heralded Messiah to condemned criminal hanging on a Roman cross.

This is about Jesus.

But it's also a significant turning point where God uses a sinful man to accomplish his purpose.

We've already seen how he uses the chief priests and the elders of the people to accomplish his plan.

But now we get a little more detail about the tragedy of Judas.

This man, terrible character, maybe we might say of no character.

A man we might say who was made in the image of God, who's unmoved by his Maker.

That's a tragedy.

Specifically, we see a little bit more here that he was chosen to follow Jesus.

And he chose to follow Jesus.

He decided to follow Jesus.

There's an interesting passage in John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

Jesus says to the disciples, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain.

See, Jesus chose his own disciples.

That was the countercultural way of working for a rabbi.

Generally, a student would choose his teacher, but Jesus chose his students.

The group of twelve included those called by Jesus to leave what they were doing and follow him.

Jesus chose Judas to be among the twelve.

But Judas and all of the other disciples, too, chose to follow Jesus.

Judas's calling, interestingly, is not explicitly detailed in Scripture.

We don't have a story like Matthew sitting alongside the road in his tax booth, collecting taxes for goods coming into Judah.

We don't have a story of Jesus walking by a tax booth and calling Judas.

But we do know that Jesus chose his own disciples.

But Judas also made his own choices, and he chose to stick around when the going got tough.

He had the same opportunities, the same privileges, the same responsibilities as the other twelve.

He was called upon to repent and believe.

But he did not.

And so we see a sense here of that divine mystery between God's sovereign will and purpose and man's responsibility.

And we can't make them all fit together in our minds.

But they're not contradictory.

They work together, they go hand in hand, and God will make them work for eternity.

And Judas here is given the most incredible opportunity known to man.

He is with Emmanuel, he is with God in the flesh.

He experiences everything that drew others to him, and he chose to follow, but he chose not to believe.

He was also chosen to fulfill God's purpose without being coerced.

If you are familiar with it, you might remember a passage that Scott mentioned in his prayer earlier, Philippians chapter two.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped and held onto at any cost.

But he made himself nothing, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.

We don't know for sure, but it's possible that when the Apostle Paul wrote of Jesus taking the form of a slave, it could be that he has this situation in mind where Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, knowing that the Old Testament pattern was that the lowest price for a human slave was set by God at 30 pieces of silver.

Whether intentionally or not, Judas viewed Jesus as worth no more than a common slave.

Fulfilling a pattern in Scripture, but there's more than just that.

And we could spend a sermon or a lesson just on each one of these.

But consider Psalm 41, verse 9.

Psalms 41:9

David says, even my close friend in whom I trusted, the one who ate my bread.

In other words, sat down at the table and had a meal with me, has lifted up his heel against me.

Psalm 55.

It's not an enemy who taunts me.

If it was, I could bear it.

It's not an adversary who deals insolently with me.

Then I could hide from him.

No, that's not the case at all, the psalmist said.

It is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.

We used to take sweet counsel together within God's house.

We walked together in the throng.

We went to the temple together, Judas.

What went wrong?

Zechariah.

Zechariah 11.

And I said to them, if it seems good to you, give me my wages.

But if not, keep them.

And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver.

And the Lord said to me, Throw it to the potter.

That lordly price.

That lordly price by which I was priced by them.

And so I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.

We'll find more of the fulfillment of that later.

If you'll notice here in Matthew 26, verse 24, there's a bit of a distinction.

Matthew 26:24

Jesus says, the Son of Man goes as it is written of him.

That is, the scriptures declare this is what's going to happen.

But woe to that man by whom, by whose choice, by whose decision, by whose action the Son of Man is betrayed.

It would have been better if he had not been born.

There's this parallel of divine human sovereignty and human action that goes hand in hand.

And it all points to this.

The tragedy of Judas is that he's the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

He's a follower with no faith.

He spent three years with Jesus as close to him as humanly possible, and it only resulted in a hard heart that was vengeful, greedy, hateful, and full of unbelief.

I like the way one author wrote it.

He said he was looking for a doorway to hell that was most convenient, and when he found it, he plunged right in.

Told you it was dark.

Can I give you some observations?

This betrayal of God's Son for the purpose of substitutionary sacrifice was a one-time, non-repeatable event.

Other human betrayals, while awful, while tragic, while painful, can only picture the diabolical nature of this betrayal.

This is worse than Adam and Eve taking of the fruit.

This is worse than your most painful betrayal.

The most awful stabbing in the back that you can imagine.

But we have to remain humble, don't we?

We have to remain humble, even though we won't be in Judas' place.

We are not the ones who will be in Judas' place to hand Jesus over to those who want him put to death.

We cannot be in Judas's place, but nevertheless, we can still have the heart of Judas.

Can we not?

Do you remember Peter?

Our good friend Peter.

He said, There is no way, Jesus, no way that I would deny you.

Are you kidding me?

Everybody else could leave you, and I'll be right by your side.

Oh, really?

Peter, let me tell you, you're gonna deny me.

Not just once, not just twice, but three times.

The same state of sinfulness resides within each of us that was present in Peter and in Judas.

We are sinful through and through, and we remain capable of these kinds of sins.

Like Judas, we are without excuse before a holy God, and we must answer for our sins.

And while our sin may not be identical to Judas's sin, we must not let that lead us to think that we cannot sin.

So we should remain humble about our own sin and not say that we are not like Judas.

We might be.

We should also be humbled by the grace of God that has kept us from reaching the pinnacle of our sin.

You ever realize that you could sin more than you do, and the only thing that is keeping you from sinning more than you do is the gracious hand of God restraining you?

See, the reality is that any one of us might be like Judas.

Not be Judas, but be like Judas.

We might look like we fit in in church.

We might look like we want to follow Jesus.

And we even we even work hard to give the evidence that we we follow him day after day after day.

We appear to love and obey the Lord Jesus, but on the inside we are we are hiding the hypocrisy that we don't really believe.

We might be hiding that we are hypocrites whom Jesus has not truly changed because we do not genuinely trust in Him.

I like the way Puritan John Flavil wrote it.

He said, Look to it, my dear friends, that none of you be found Christless at your appearance before Him.

Those that continue Christless now will be left speechless then.

God forbid that you have heard so much of Christ, and you that have professed so much of Christ should at last fall into a worse condition than those that have never heard the name of Christ.

My friends, as the writer to Hebrews says, make sure that there is not among you an unbelieving heart.

But the critical lesson, the critical lesson from Judas is not about sin.

The critical lesson about Judas is not about the darkness and the pain of betrayal.

The critical lesson about Judas is not about how God used sin.

The critical lesson is not about sin in Judas or in me or in you.

The critical lesson is that God would bring salvation through such a despicable and satanic betrayal.

The praiseworthy point of this passage is that God the Son, God the Son would know the promise of the scriptures, that his own friend with whom he ate bread would lift up his heel against him and betray him, and yet he would still agree to come to this earth and to endure the betrayal and endure the point of the cross to the point of death to purchase your salvation.

That is praiseworthy.

In all things for good, Thomas Watson wrote, Sin is like a poison which corrupts the blood, that infects the heart, and without a sovereign antidote, it brings death.

Such is the venomous nature of sin.

It's deadly and it's damning.

But God.

My favorite words in scripture.

But yet God, by his mighty, overruling power, makes sin turn to the good of his people.

We do not praise Judas.

We do not praise Judas as sin.

We do not praise betrayal.

But we can sing hallelujah, what a savior.

Because he in eternity past determined the way.

And did not count his divinity and his glory and his majesty as something to be held to at all costs.

But decided to be found in human form even as a slave.

And submitted himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.

To purchase your salvation.

So that at the name of Jesus your knee might bow and your tongue might confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks and praise this morning as your people that you labored for our salvation, that you took it upon yourself to pay the price.

And so we relish in that.

May we not be unmoved, but may we be moved by what matters, by the person of Jesus Christ, who gave his life so that we might be saved.

Receive the praises of your people this morning, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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