Seven Days That Changed The World | The Anatomy of Betrayal | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart

All right.

Well, you know, I'm really glad we we sang how he loves us and Jesus loves me, because if there's any message, I hope you get even before we start this message on Judas.

Jesus loved Judas.

He did.

And I hope that today's message shifts the way that you think about Judas because I think for far too long in church history, uh many churches have taken a less than biblical stance on his life.

So I want to show you what scripture actually says about Judas so that we can understand why he's in the Bible and why Judas actually becomes a mirror for our own life.

Today's message is the Anatomy of Betrayal.

We're in a series called The Seven Days That Changed the World.

This is the last week in the life of Christ leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection.

We're at midweek.

And midweek on that Wednesday, we talk about the betrayal of Christ at Judah's hands.

As we get started, let's pray.

Father, thanks so much that we have this time together and thank you for your word.

Thank you, God, for how you've challenged me this past week as I've looked at this story with a fresh set of eyes and new study and have felt compelled, even in my own heart, to go deeper in this message than I've ever gone before.

So I ask now that as we're gathered and we're all attentive to the things you want to say to us, that in the same spirit with which you've accompanied us in worship, that now you accompany us as we open our life to your spirit and what he's saying to us through the message today.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So today people call their sons Paul and they name their dogs Nero, but the only thing that gets named after Judas is a goat.

The Judas goat is the animal that leads the sheep into the slaughterhouse.

Now you should know that the name Judas was a very common name in Jesus' day.

Judas is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Judah, which means thanksgiving or praise.

So if you know your Old Testament history at all, you also know that Judah was one of the twelve tribes of Israel.

It's considered the kingly tribe because King David came out of Judah, as well as King Jesus came.

It was a descendant of the tribe of Judah.

So when Judas, Judas Iscariot's parents picked out his name, they were literally giving him one of the best names any boy could have.

But today the name Judas has become synonymous with traitor or snake.

It's what you call friends who tell our secrets, who cheat in marriage, who lie behind our backs.

Judas' name has gone down in infany because of his decision to betray Christ.

Because of those associations, though, it's easy to reduce Judas into the embodiment of evil, to make him into a caricature.

I looked up the word caricature in Webster's dictionary this week, and this is what it said.

A caricature is a picture, a description, or an imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.

Now, this is one of the biggest mistakes in church history.

We have demonized Judas.

We exaggerate his worst qualities while minimizing the things that are good in him.

And so for 2,000 years, we've so distorted Judas that it makes us all think we're better than this sorry excuse for a human being.

Just like in this cartoon, I found this cartoon a few years back.

One of the disciples asked the question one of us will betray you.

I can't believe it.

Who among us could possibly do such a thing?

And there's Judas as a stereotypical villain, his handlebar mustache, and a top hat.

It's hilarious when you look at it, but it totally misses the point.

From the earliest times until now, even up until the Middle Ages, people were writing things about Judas that simply were not true.

They try to make him appear worse than what he was.

Some even made Judas into a kind of vampire who was afraid of silver and crosses.

In fact, you can even watch, because I've seen some of these in some of the current vampire movies.

Sometimes you'll hear them reference Judas as being the first vampire, which is crazy talk.

But when you demonize Judas, you lose the opportunity to learn from his failure.

When you demonize Judas, you fail to understand how good people can end up doing very bad things.

And when you demonize Judas, you run the risk of becoming like Judas yourself.

Bottom line is this what he did, we're all capable of doing.

The truth is there's a Judas root in every human heart.

Now, here's some wisdom from an unlikely source: Scooby-Doo.

When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, my brother, sister, and I would always watch Scooby-Doo on Saturday morning.

And you know, if you've ever seen the show, if you've seen one show, you've seen them all.

Because it's the same plot line in every single story.

Because whether the Scooby and the gang were facing a villain, whether it was a ghost or a witch or a monster, whatever it was, eventually there'd come a point in the show where they would catch and unmask the villain.

Every single time, the villain ended up being somebody you'd never suspect.

It was Farmer Bob, it was old man Jenkins, it was a sweet librarian.

Remember the show?

If you've seen it, you know this is the truth.

AJ Swoboda made this observation.

He said, Scooby-Doo teaches us precisely what Christianity's been trying to teach us about Good Friday.

The villain and the monster aren't who we thought they were.

In the gospel stories, everyone fails.

Everyone sins against Christ, even the best disciples, even the good guys.

In the end, the villain is us.

So that's really the point in the Gospels, not just about the entire story of Jesus' life, but also especially about Judas.

The villain could be any one of us given the right circumstances and the right pressure.

And if you think otherwise, the likelihood that you'll end up being Judas goes up exponentially.

If you can't hear this story without searching your own heart, then you're probably more like Judas now than you realize.

So today we're going to look at three qualities that are essential in his story.

But right up front, let me say I'm going to spend a little more time on the first point because what it does is it undergirds, it expands, and it informs the rest of what we know about Judas, so that we don't just reduce him to some villainous, evil man.

My first point is simply this Judas was the last person you'd ever suspect.

So we asked the question: what do we really know about Judas?

What we know is this his name is mentioned in the Gospels 20 times.

He's also mentioned twice in the book of Acts.

There are also eight different men in the Gospels named Judas.

There was another one of the twelve disciples whose name was Judas.

They often, he's Judas the son of James.

They often call him by his nickname Thaddeus, but he's another Judas in the twelve.

Jesus had a half-brother.

His mother produced a half-brother.

His name was Judas, but we often shorten his name to Jude so as not to associate him with Judas Iscariot.

So what else do we know?

Well, we can say that Judas Iscariot is not his first and last name.

That's an easy mistake to make.

Iscariot is a definer to tell you which Judas they're talking about.

And in Greek, Iscariot, it comes from the word Apacariatu.

And Apacariato literally means from Kariath.

Now, Kariath is a city about 23 miles south of Jerusalem.

Why does this even matter?

I'll tell you why it matters.

Because Judas is from south of Bethlehem.

That means he's Judean.

All the other disciples were Galilean.

So what that does is it separates Judas from the rest in that he's probably the only one who is really considered respectable because of being from Judea and didn't speak with that Galilean accent.

Galilee in those days was considered kind of a backwater area of Israel.

It was where all the hicks came from.

It was redneck country.

You know, these people were uneducated.

They didn't speak like the rest of us.

I was born in Kentucky.

I don't often tell people that because I grew up in Ohio.

In Ohio, all the Kentuckians were hillbillies.

And so we had that same kind of derision aimed at us simply because of where we were born.

Well, same thing happened with those disciples because everybody knew they were from Galilee.

It's like, you know, these are Galileans.

Why do you give them any credit?

But not Judas.

Judas is Judean.

Now we don't know the circumstances under which Christ first met him, where he was, or how it happened.

We know nothing of his call to be a disciple.

But there's no question he's one of the twelve.

Which means for three and a half years he enjoys a super close relationship with Jesus Christ, which also means he's heard all of his sermons.

He's witnessed all the miracles.

He's seen the poor provided for, he's seen the sick healed, he's seen the demon possessed delivered.

He saw with his own eyes when Jesus fed the 5,000 plus people on a hillside using a boy sack lunch.

He's one who saw when Jesus was out on the raging sea and he calmed the storm with just a word.

He was there when Lazarus came out of the tomb, still bound in his grave clothes, because Jesus told him to come forth from the dead.

So he's not just witness this stuff.

Understand, he's also participated in the ministry.

Remember, early in the ministry, Jesus sends out the twelve to go minister throughout the cities of Galilee to preach and heal the sick, which means that in Jesus' name, Judas had wielded supernatural power for himself.

But what's most important for today's message is this there's never the slightest suggestion anywhere in the Gospels that Jesus stood out from the rest of the disciples as an odd duck.

He's just as faithful, he's just as enthusiastic, he's just as trusted as the rest.

In fact, he's probably trusted more than the rest.

You know why I know that?

Because they put him in charge of the money.

And if you know anything about people who are put in charge with the money, these are the people you trust the most.

You don't just give, hand everybody your checkbook.

You say, hey, this guy can be trusted with his money, he'll be faithful.

So all the disciples trust Judas implicitly that he's a straight error.

He can be, he's a straight arrow, he can be trusted with anything.

And that trust factor is significant because it makes his betrayal all the more devastating.

Stephen Covey once said this: trust is the glue of life.

It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication.

It's the foundation principle that holds all relationship.

When I trust somebody, I believe that they're going to do what they say they're going to do.

We can depend on it.

Without trust, you don't have a relationship.

You know that, right?

You have an entanglement, but it's not a relationship.

The foundation of every relationship is trust.

All of our most important relationships, where it's whether it's marriage or family or church or work or community, without trust, they're all destined to fail.

But therein lies the problem.

What do you do when people don't keep their promises?

When someone lies to you, betrays you, shares your secrets.

When that happens, the very foundation of your trust has been destroyed.

So at the heart of today's message is broken trust.

And with that in mind, that background, let's turn our attention to Wednesday of the seven days that changed the world, and let's talk about what happened the night that Judas betrays Christ.

I call this the drama of the Last Supper.

Now, probably the two most famous paintings in the world were painted by the same guy: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, Da Vinci.

Now, if you've never seen, you know, the Last Supper is actually painted on a wall.

It's not a canvas of itself, and so it's painted on a church wall.

But the Last Supper may be one of the most famous, if not more famous, than the Mona Lisa.

But what this painting does is it freezes in time the moment that Jesus announces, one of you will betray me.

And what Da Vinci tries to do in this painting is capture the expressions and gestures, the reaction of the disciples.

Shock and fear and disbelief and anger and sadness over what Jesus has revealed.

Of course, if you're looking at the painting, your eyes are immediately drawn to Judas.

So I have him singled out here so we can look at him a little more carefully.

Now you'll notice that Judas is reaching.

He's reaching to his left hand to dip into the cup.

If you didn't know, there's a long-standing and even historical prejudice against left-handed people.

In Latin, the word for left is sinestra, or the word from which we get sinister.

So Da Vinci has Judas use his left hand.

We'll pull that image up again.

You see, he's using his left hand to reach.

So he does this to make Judas instantly suspect, so that we know there's something wrong or something not right with Judas.

Meanwhile, in his right hand, what's he clutching?

The money bag.

So that's a reference, of course, to the 30 pieces of silver for which he betrays Christ.

There's another detail a lot of people don't notice, but you'll notice in front of the money bag, he's actually spilled the salt.

Now, this has been a long-standing superstition.

If you spill salt, you're inviting bad outcomes.

So Da Vinci has him spill the salt, as well as if you examine the painting, Da Vinci has made Judas's face darker than the other disciples.

He wants to kind of single him out that he doesn't have the same countenance.

Everything in this painting, what Da Vinci's trying to do is single out Judas as if he's different from the rest.

And my question is, is that right?

Is that true?

Is that the way the Bible tells a story?

So let's look at the way the Bible tells a story.

The Bible says this, this is Jesus speaking.

I'm not referring to all of you.

I know those I have chosen, but this is to fulfill the passage of Scripture.

He who shared my bread has turned against me.

So in this passage, Jesus is quoting Psalm 41, verse 9.

Psalms 41:9

In the ancient Middle East, when somebody ate bread with you, that was a sign of friendship.

It's an affirmation of a close connection that you share with others.

So in light of that, what the Old Testament prophesied, and how Jesus understood that or interpreted that, is that someone who was a close friend, someone whom he trusted, a person who sat at table with him and shared his bread would be the betrayer.

Now, I think one of the worst pains on the human level that any of us ever experience is betrayal by people who are closest to us.

I mean, it's a gut punch.

It wouldn't hurt so bad if we didn't care so much, but the fact is we do care.

And because we care, that's why infidelity decimates a marriage.

Or when a close friend turns on you and says something behind your back and undermines you in every way, you find it hard to trust other people again.

So when Jesus tells his disciples that one of them would betray him, they're deeply distressed.

And all of them begin to ask, you know, is it me, Lord?

And you might remember Peter, Peter said, Hey, no matter what these other bozos do, I'm standing up for you, Jesus.

I'll always be on your side.

I'll never deny you.

But Peter denies Jesus not once but three times.

In the end, all of them abandoned Jesus to a lonely death.

None of them were immune to betrayal.

So this lesson is essential to this story because if you don't understand how much Judas is trusted, if you don't understand that Judas looks like the rest of the disciples, then you're going to misinterpret everything about this story.

Now I came across this passage of scripture, and the first time I saw this, I couldn't unsee it anymore.

Something that's stated as plain as day, but I somehow, in years of studying the Bible, it never stood out to me.

I want you to show you what happened that night when Jesus identifies the betrayer.

He says, Jesus answered, It is the one to whom I'll give this piece of bread when I've dipped it in the dish.

Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon.

As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

What you're about to do, do quickly, Jesus told him.

But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him.

Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the feast or to give something to the poor.

Now, do you see what's going on here?

Jesus says, I'm going to show you who the betrayer will be.

I'm going to dip this bread into this sop and I'll give it to the betrayer.

And then he dips it in the sop and he gives it to Judas.

Now, friends, you can't really get much clearer than that.

I mean, apart from just saying, hey guys, it's Judas, right?

I mean, he's told him this is what I'm going to do, and then he points out that it's Judas.

And then he looks at Judas and he says, What you're about to do, do quickly.

And Judas gets up and leaves.

And what do the disciples think about Judas's sudden departure?

Do they said, man, who'd have believed it?

It was Judas all along.

I always thought there was something wrong with that guy.

No.

Instead, they impute nothing but a pure motive to him leaving.

They said, Well, he must be running an errand for Jesus, or he must be going out to give money to the poor.

And then they return to their discussion.

Now, who is that betrayer going to be, right?

They don't suspect Judas, and that's the point.

Just as a side note, by the way, on Passover evening, it was common to go give money to the poor.

It was a tradition that you would actually go to the temple and the poor would gather that.

We know that because first century Jewish historian Josephus wrote about it.

He said, as the Jews were celebrating the feast of unleavened bread, which we call the Passover, it was customary for the priest to open the temple gates just after midnight.

And for pilgrims, it was customary to give alms to the poor.

So that's what the disciples imagined Judas is doing.

So when Jesus explicitly points out that the betrayer is Judas, nobody picks up on it at all.

Why?

Because nobody would have suspected Judas in a million years.

That's why.

They trust him that much.

It only reinforces everything I've been saying.

We try to make Judas into evil incarnate, and I'm telling you, he looks like a saint.

That's the point.

So this guy looks the part, he acts the part.

Everything about him suggests he's a good guy.

So much so that when Jesus shows who the betrayer is, it doesn't even register.

He looks evil, he's a saint.

So when it comes down to the actual betrayal that night, here's what happened.

Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, Greetings, Rabbi, and kissed him.

Now, this is what he told the soldiers, how he would identify Christ from the others, he'd go up and kiss him.

So the kiss of betrayal, right?

And then Jesus replied, Friend, do what you came for.

Then the men step forward, seized Jesus, and arrested him.

Now, when when Judas comes and plants that fateful kiss on Jesus, Jesus calls him friend.

Did you notice that?

Friend.

Do what you came for.

That's not the term I was thinking.

I'm thinking, you know, turncoat, hypocrite, scoundrel, low life, dirty rat, liar.

And it shows you what a what a stratosphere exists between Jesus and myself.

You see, Jesus would rather be betrayed than fail to love his betrayer.

Because Jesus knows something you and I tend to forget.

Unless love conquers Judas, nothing else ever will.

Even with a knife to the heart, Jesus only knows how to love.

Jesus loves me.

This I know.

For the Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves Judas.

And that leads to this, facing the Judas tendency.

Well, I hope by now at least it's obvious that you can't look at this story and say, he's the bad guy, I'm the good guy, thank God I'm nothing like Judas.

That's how you get into trouble.

Instead, we have to fearlessly own the truth about ourselves.

This is important because often the things we most dislike in other people are the things we won't own in ourselves.

And so it's easy to project that stuff out onto other people and judge it out there and treat them like they're the bad guy.

I mean, we all have this Judas tendency.

We have this capacity for betrayal, and it makes it harder for us to forgive other people because we won't face that capacity in ourselves.

Now, you've probably heard this term before, scapegoat.

You know where it comes from.

It's from Old Testament Jewish history.

You see, on the Day of Atonement, two goats would be bought to the priest.

One goat would be sacrificed as an offering, as covering for sin, but the other goat is what they call the scapegoat.

So it's the escapegoat or the goes-away goat.

The priest would lay his hands on the head of that goat and symbolically transfer onto that goat the sins of the people.

And then do you know what they do with it?

They'd push it out of the city into the wilderness to die on its own.

So the scapegoat would carry off the sins of the people and be abandoned into the wilderness to die.

And once they did that, the people would say, okay, cool, we got rid of that problem.

But over time, people began to treat other people as the scapegoat.

That is when one person gets blamed for the faults of everybody else.

It happens in politics all the time, doesn't it?

One political party gets in trouble, they're getting a lot of really bad press.

They know they got to clean up this mess, so they look for what they call a fall guy or a fall girl.

And they're looking for this, they're they're they're looking for this person upon whom they're going to lay all the problems of the administration, all the problems with this policy.

We're gonna lay it on that person and fire them and drive them out of politics, and then we can say, got rid of that problem, we're done.

They become the scapegoat.

Well, we do that all the time.

We make one person responsible for all of our mistakes.

It happens in families, happens in businesses, happens in churches, really any place where they're people.

We look for someone for whom we can pin the blame of all of our collective problems and drive them away.

Carl Marnie.

He was a Baptist preacher, lived in the 60s, stood up a lot for social change in the U.S., he reminded the church that we treat Judas as a scapegoat.

He said this Jesus died for the sins of the world, and Judas died for the sins of the church.

I mean, get what he's saying.

When he says Judas died for the sins of the church, he's saying, in a sense, he's become our scapegoat.

We make Judas into the representation of all that's evil, one upon whom we can lay all of our sins and collective problems, and then it makes us feel better for who we are.

In other words, we don't want to face the Judas tendency in our own hearts that we can all wonder and be less than faithful to God.

Now, I don't know about you.

I've been following Jesus for a long time, but a part of that story has been many times when I have been less than faithful to God.

How about you?

Can you look back on your life and say time when through fear, arrogance, whatever it may have been, that you strayed from the path, that you weren't near as faithful to God as God was being faithful to you.

So what Judas represents is the unpredictable and unknowable in every human heart.

There's a part of Judas in all of us, and only a few brave souls are ready to admit that.

There was a famous evangelist in the 1700s, his name was George Whitefield, and amazing preacher, English preacher.

Someone once wrote Whitefield and accused him of all manner of wrongdoing in the ministry.

I love the way he responded.

This is what he wrote back to his critic.

I thank you heartily for your letter.

As for the things you said about me, I know worse things about myself than you'll ever say about me.

Love in Christ, George Whitefield.

I think, you know, this is a guy who's not a stranger to his dark side.

Mother Teresa was once asked, why do you spend so much time caring for the poor and cradling the dying in your arms?

Her response might shock you.

This is what she said.

I engage in this ministry of love because I know there's a Hitler inside of me.

She's aware.

She's got a broken part of her.

She's aware of that tendency to stray.

She's aware of the Judas vein that runs in her own heart.

There was a pastor in uh died a couple years ago, Dr.

Timothy Keller, who was in New York City, Redeemer Presbyterian.

He said, when it comes to the understanding of our sinfulness, it's not enough just to ask, what have I done?

but also what am I capable of doing?

If I was under certain threats, certain temptations, certain pressures, or even certain opportunities, could I produce great evil under certain circumstances which I haven't experienced yet?

And the Bible says, yes.

What I'm saying is all of us are more sinful than we imagine, but at the same time, God is more faithful than any of us dared dream.

So let's take a minute and let's shift gears and talk honestly why we're so afraid to admit to having a Judas heart.

And I call this next point Judas felt the crushing weight of shame.

Now, none of what I'm about to say is intended to minimize what Judas did.

What he did was wrong.

But my purpose in this message is to help you step down from the judge's bench and into Judas's shoes.

To stop thinking that we're better than Judas and instead feel what he felt, especially after he messed up.

The truth is, all of us sin.

All of us mess up, all of us fail.

And I know what happens when people fail.

Because I've done it to myself and did it to myself for years and years and years.

The voice of shame kicks in.

And what the voice of shame says is look at you, and you call yourself a Christian.

What would people think about you if they knew the truth?

What a sorry excuse for a human being you are.

Those are the voices of shame.

And Judas heard those voices.

And here's what shame drove him to do.

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and elders.

I have sinned, he said, for I betrayed innocent blood.

What is that to us?

They replied.

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left.

Then he went away and hanged himself.

Now, a lot of people read this story and pass over what the Bible says, that Judas was really remorseful over the things he'd done.

In fact, not only does he return the money, but notice he stood up for Jesus and declares Christ to be innocent.

I believe sincerely that Judas tried to stop the wheels that he'd set in motion to undo the damage that he was done, but he was powerless to stop the voices of shame in his own head.

I mean, think about your own life.

Have you ever done something that you were truly broken over?

Maybe even tried to make things right, but you just kept beating yourself up no matter how hard you tried to fix it?

You said that you found that you couldn't break free from the voice of shame.

You just felt like a sorry excuse for a human being.

That's where Judas was.

And that is really toxic.

It's the toxic emotion of shame.

Because shame doesn't stop just because you admit that you're wrong.

Why is shame so persistent and so destructive?

Well, here's what I'm about to tell you.

Shame is about our loss of place with others.

What you have to understand about the nature of shame is shame is a social phenomenon.

In other words, it has to do with what I think that you will think about me.

So when I sin, when I blow it, when I really failed, I no longer feel like I belong.

Shame was a factor in the first sin.

Remember, Adam and Eve, they sinned.

God still sings up, seeks them out, and he says, Where are you?

And Adam says, I heard you in the garden, but I was ashamed because I was naked, so I hid.

And the question is this: why does Adam hide?

Some people say, Well, you know, it's because he disobeyed God.

Well, that may be true, but that's not what he said.

Some people say, Well, because he's afraid of the consequences.

Again, true, but not what he said.

Why does he go and hide?

He tells us why.

He said, Because I was ashamed.

I was ashamed because I'm naked.

Now, for the first time in Adam's life, he's experiencing a new emotion he's never experienced before.

Shame at being completely exposed.

That's what shame is.

Shame is a humiliation of being exposed for who you really are.

Nowhere to hide, just standing there naked for the world to see.

Now, here's the deal.

Anytime I let you see the real me, the me that no one else sees, I'm naked.

I'm totally and completely vulnerable.

And if in a family, in a marriage, in a church, among my friends, if I'm ridiculed for showing you who I am, guess what I'll do?

I'll make a vow to never show you that again.

I'll hide.

I'll keep that to myself.

I believe it's not safe to be myself.

I'll go on concealing more and more of me, and I my nature will become a concealer, but shame is going to tighten its grip around my life.

You know, when Adam and Eve felt shame, they hide from God.

They were convinced that the relationship had changed because shame is about our loss of place with others.

So they feel like they've lost their place with God, that God's not going to understand, that God, they're fearful over what God's going to think.

By the way, on God's end, the relationship had not changed.

Because God still shows up after they sinned in the garden to walk with them in the cool of the day.

It wasn't God who ran away.

It was Adam and Eve who ran away.

And you have to understand this shame is a do-it-yourself job.

God is not putting shame on you.

You're putting shame on you.

And shame is causing you to retreat, to pull away from those people that you don't think are going to understand.

That's what shame does.

Shame is always about our loss of place.

So Judas, just like Adam and Eve, lost his place with Jesus and with the others.

He thought, because of what I've done, I no longer fit in.

And he couldn't handle the thought of what Jesus was thinking or what his friends would think of him.

So let's go a little deeper into this idea of shame and the messages it brings.

I call this the distortions of shame.

The first distortion of shame is this there's never a way back.

Shame will tell you that what you've done to this relationship can never be undone.

There's no way back.

In other words, you've utterly destroyed it.

And it's true that you can't return to a state of innocence, and a broken trust cannot be unbroken any more than you can unbreak a broken heart.

But love that suffered a loss is not permanently disabled.

It can be healed, it can be made stronger, it can be made more real.

What I'm saying is this there may not be a way back, but there's always a way forward.

You see, shame is never going to boldface lie to you.

It's going to tell you half the story.

What it's going to do is you can't make it like it was before.

Maybe you can't, but you can make it better than what it was.

And that's the difference.

That's the whole truth.

Here's a second message of shame.

My sin is too great.

Shame tells us that our sin is too great.

Again, it's only half of the story.

Your failure may have been great, but the other half is this my sin may be great, God's grace is greater.

The key to overcoming shame is not to learn to minimize or discount sin.

It's to confess it and believe that God's remedy is the only thing that can set us free.

If you don't get that part, if you don't get that God can set you free, not just from your sin, but from the effects of that sin, the guilt and the shame that accompany it, if you don't believe that, then this last lie of shame will be fatal.

I have to atone for my sin.

Judas tries to pay for his own sin.

He took the money back.

He declares Christ's innocence.

He's trying to undo what he had done, but it doesn't work because it can't silence the voices of shame.

You see, all of us, I think, at some point in our life wish we had a do-over.

That there are certain choices we wish we'd never made, certain words we wish we'd never spoken, certain reactions we wish we'd never had.

We wish we could take it all back and somehow undo the damage we cause.

But here's the deal.

You can go back and we think, you know, if I could relive in that moment, I would make totally different choices now.

But here's the thing: a confession can satisfy guilt.

Compensation can satisfy justice.

But only an atonement can satisfy shame.

Atonement means someone has to pay.

When we do wrong, we inherently know this.

We know that someone has to pay for the wrong.

The tragic assumption we make is that only we can pay the penalty on our own sin.

When Judas heard the voices of shame, he tried to atone for his sin by repaying the money.

When that didn't work, he chose self-punishment.

He ended up taking his own life thinking that would atone for his sin.

What Judas failed to realize is that's why Jesus came.

Jesus was making atonement for Judas at that very moment.

It's been what he'd been trying to teach them for three and a half years.

We can't make it right on our own.

We can't afford the price tag on our own failures.

Only Jesus has the capacity to pay, and he paid once for all.

That's what we forget.

Someone has to pay.

Jesus already did.

So some of us, when we mess up, we inflict pain on ourselves.

Unending guilt trips, saying horrible things to ourselves again and again and again, reinforcing that misery.

But you know what we're trying to do?

We're trying to self-atone.

In essence, what we're saying to God, God, I got this one.

Don't need your forgiveness.

I'm going to torment myself so that I feel bad enough for long enough, and then somehow I'll deserve to be forgiven.

Let's call that what it is.

That's an attempt to self-atone.

It's a human attempt to handle a God-sized problem.

A.W.

Tozer called it the perpetual penance of regret.

So we beat ourselves up constantly over our failures.

And what we're saying to God is, like I said, all right, I don't need your forgiveness.

I got this one.

When you and I sin, the first choice you and I make is whether we run to God or sink into ourself.

Will we let God do what only God can do, or are we going to try to manage the penalty on our own?

And that's where Judas was at.

And that brings us to this last point.

Judas died for his sins, but he didn't have to.

So as we wrap up these stories, there's two points that kind of bring it all together.

The first one is this the story of two denials.

Before Judas betrayed Christ, Luke tells us that Satan entered into him.

I'm sure you notice that in the scripture.

So we think that's why Judas was so evil.

He had the devil in him.

Okay, but you know that Jesus said the same thing to Peter, right?

When Peter objects that Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem and die, he says, No way, Lord, that's never going to happen.

And what does Jesus say?

Get thee behind me, Satan.

You know, that's one term I wouldn't want Jesus to ever look at me and say, hey, get behind me, Satan.

And yet that's what was true of Peter.

He was acting in the devil's place.

So both Peter and Judas were influenced in some way or another by Satan.

And both men turned their backs on Jesus when he needed them most.

At the Last Supper, Jesus tells them, You're all going to deny me.

Peter brags that it won't be true of him, but he does deny.

When Jesus arrested, Peter follows from a distance.

So far, so good.

But then people begin to recognize him.

Hey, aren't you one of the twelve?

And he begins to skirt the issue.

And then finally, he denies and curses that he never knew Christ.

Peter denies Christ three times.

Now, Eugene Peterson is one of my favorite writers of all time.

He's the guy, he's a really great New Testament scholar, put together the message Bible.

Some of you like reading that Bible.

Well, he talks about the difference between Peter and Judas, and this is a longer quote than I would normally use on a Sunday, but I can never say it as well as he did.

So let me read it to you.

Among the apostles, the one absolute stunning success was Judas.

And the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter.

Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us.

He was successful both financially and politically.

He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band.

He skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal.

And Peter was a failure in the ways that we most dread.

He was impotent in a crisis and socially inept.

At the arrest of Jesus, he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward.

In the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi, and the vision on the Mount of Transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things.

He was not the kind of companion we'd want with us in a time of danger, and he's not the kind of person we feel comfortable with on a social occasion.

Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men.

Judas is now a byword for betrayal.

And Peter's one of the most honored names in the church and in the world.

Judas is a villain, Peter's a saint.

Yet the world, now listen to this, the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence, and ineptness.

Let me ask you, why did time reverse the judgments on the two men?

I'll tell you why.

Because Judas refused to learn from his failure, cut his own life short.

Peter learned from his failure.

There's truly not much difference between Judas and Peter on that fateful night.

Both of them sank to unbelievable lows.

Each completely forsook their master, yet one died and the other lived.

Judas thought, I can't recover from this.

So he takes his own life.

That is without a doubt the most extreme and tragic way of dealing with shame.

But make no mistake about it, that's what shame aims to do.

It destroys relationships, it destroys potential, and if left unchecked, it will try to destroy your life.

Shame is always the path of self-destruction.

On the other hand, you have Peter.

Peter and Jesus both disastrously failed Jesus by their denial and betrayal.

Peter also wrestles with shame.

He ran away like Adam and Eve did in his shame.

Remember this?

After he denies, he runs back to his old lifestyle.

He's lost his place with other people.

But as he runs away, Jesus pursues.

And Jesus finds him there fishing for the night.

And at the side on the banks of that lake, Jesus looks him in the eye.

And Peter finds forgiveness in those eyes.

And that message, that message of forgiveness becomes Peter's message.

That God can forgive the worst in all of us.

Same sin, same shame.

One ends in death, one in a changed life.

So here's my question: What's eating away at your soul?

Could it be that the thing that you think disqualifies you, makes you unfit, causes you to not fit in with everybody else, that your greatest failure could be your greatest strength.

That the thing you think is holding you back is the thing God would use to propel you forward.

That if you, like Peter, could learn about God's great forgiveness even after a colossal failure, that that could become your message and in return you lead thousands of people to Christ as a result of that.

I mean, this is what happened to me.

My ministry is all about God's redemption of my biggest failures, nearly destroying my marriage, two years in 12-step recovery, three years of counseling, 30 years in spiritual direction.

And God uses all of that now to help me to be able to speak to people about their real life and their real pain and how God meets them in their sin and their guilt and their shame, and they don't have to live that way anymore.

I need that because I've lived that.

When you look at, I go to Africa for the first time, it's my world, it inside out, shows me how I led this church so poorly.

I end up writing a book about that experience called We Were Wrong.

What in that story is about success?

Nothing.

It's a book about my failures.

And yet God has blessed it and used it and sent that message around the world.

I'm telling you, the thing you think holds you back is the thing God would love to use to propel you forward because you know what?

A lot of people are just like you.

A lot of people wrestle with the same kind of things.

A lot of people have beat themselves up with shame and guilt over the things they've done, and they realize that they have no hope until they turn to Christ.

And when he sets us free, then we're one beggar telling another beggar, here's how you find bread.

Here's where you find it.

You find it in Jesus, right?

So God is going to use your failures like he used in Peter's life if you will let him, if you'll trust him with that.

Final thing is a tree of despair versus a tree of hope.

The Bible says in Luke 22, 4 that Judas went his way.

So think about this.

Judas climbs a hill called regret.

Jesus climbs a hill called Calvary.

At the top of both of those hills is a tree.

Both trees are weathered and leafless.

On one tree is a hangman's noose.

The other tree is formed into a cross.

On both trees hangs a man who will die.

One man dies alone, trying to pay for his own sin and shame.

The other dies alone, paying for the sins of the world.

There's no more death on that second tree.

One death was enough for all.

A tree of hope and a tree of despair.

Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, we always talk about he pays the penalty for our sins.

He doesn't just pay the penalty for your sins, he paid for all the effects of the sin.

He carried your shame to the cross.

He carried your guilt to the cross.

He bore them on the cross so that you wouldn't have to.

Listen to how the Bible says it in the book of Hebrews.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus carried my shame.

Jesus already paid for all of that.

I just come to him and ask for forgiveness, and he forgives me.

Norman Krauss talked about how the cross is an instrument of shame.

Listen to this.

We must recall that the cross was designed above all to be an instrument of contempt and public ridicule.

Crucifixion was the most shameful execution imaginable.

The victim died naked in bloody sweat, helpless to control body excretions or to brush away the swarming flies.

Thus exposed to the jeering crowd, the criminal died a spectacle of disgrace.

By Roman law, no citizen could be so dishonorably executed.

The cross was reserved for foreigners and slaves.

So both Hebrews and Kraus say Jesus did more than just carry your sins, he bore your shame.

And for me, I'm grateful.

Because I used to carry it and it beat me up and it nearly destroyed me.

Because that's the way shame works.

Jesus allowed it to destroy him, so it doesn't have to destroy you anymore.

When I feel shame, I feel separated from God and other people.

I think I'll never get over this.

My life will never be what it could be.

I've lost my place with God and others.

I can't recover.

I can't get out.

That's the way the enemy wants you to feel.

He wants you to be cut off from God.

He wants you to be cut off from other people.

Jesus reunites us with God and says, you have a place.

You're the beloved of God.

You have a place in the heart of God.

So Jesus carries our sin.

He carries our shame.

He's not just the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

You realize that, right?

He's the scapegoat.

We laid our sins on him.

He's driven out into the wilderness to die alone.

Jesus is the fulfillment of all those Old Testament analogies.

And when He dies alone, He carries our darkness, He carries our shame into the wilderness.

He dies to liberate us from us.

So Jesus' death is an end to our darkness.

We're no longer separated from God.

Because nothing, remember this verse in Roman, nothing can separate me from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus.

I know that.

I claim that.

I live that every day of my life.

Shame has no Power over me.

If you're letting shame have power over you, remember God has never shamed you.

You shamed you.

And you're allowing a destructive carryover from sin to continue to destroy your life.

I believe seeing the heart of Jesus throughout the Gospels, it gives me every reason to believe that had Judas waited, Jesus would have sought out Judas in the same way he sought out Peter for the same kind of love and forgiveness.

So no matter who you are, no matter what you've done, Jesus comes into the darkest recesses of your life, comes to let you know you don't have to beat yourself up, you don't have to punish yourself, you don't have to wallow in misery.

He carried it so you wouldn't have to.

He paid the cost.

He's entered into your darkness.

Let him lead you out into the light today.

That's where he wants you to be.

That's where he wants you to live.

Free and forgiven.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you so much for the power of your truth.

That God, only you can set us free.

That like Judas, when we make him into the devil incarnate, we lose the essential message that we're supposed to take away from his life.

We lose what it means to be a saint who struggles.

We lose what it means to be a real person, a real disciple who, given the right circumstances, can make some pretty heinous choices.

We learn from Judas's life what it means to remove ourselves from the circle of belonging with you and other people.

And we learn from Judas that it doesn't have to be that way.

That's why you came, Jesus.

You came to set right what's been wrong in this world.

You came to set us free, not just from sin, but the effects of sin in our life and in our relationships.

That God, you paid these penalties, you carried these things to the cross so we wouldn't have to carry them anymore.

So, God, I pray that you would speak your liberation into hearts and lives today.

For people who don't know you in a personal relationship, who maybe this is the first time that a pastor has really explained what the cross is about, that they would say, I want that in my life, Jesus.

I want what you did on the cross to be applied to me.

I want you to forgive me for my sins and my failures, for doing life in a self-styled way.

I want you to forgive me for that.

But God, I want you to set me free from sin and shame and guilt.

I want you to set me free so that I can live, God, in the light of your love, to know that I belong to you and I belong to others.

That God, you would use the failures of my life as my ministry.

That God, you would redeem them and I could help other people who feel trapped in the in the terrible and unrelenting voice of shame to set them free from that.

God, use me in my life in that way.

And God, for any Christian who lives beneath their privilege, who at some point in their life asks you to come into their life as their Lord and their Savior.

But for some reason, every time they fail, they sink back.

They're drawn back into this quagmire of shame.

Help us to realize, God, you carried it so that we don't have to.

That there is no reason to doubt that we belong to you.

That God, there is literally nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ that's in Jesus.

So, God, help us to live like the truth is true.

I pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

God bless you all.

Have a great week.