Messages

Jesus is the Sugar

Date:12/13/20

Series: Matthew

Passage: Matthew 26:14-16

Speaker: BJ Chursinoff

Why did Judas betray the Son of God for 30 pieces of silver? For the same reason that some people today spend a portion of their life following Jesus, then come to a point where they too decide it’s not worth following Him anymore.

In this message we will explore what lies at the heart of a decision to give up on Jesus – and what Christians can do to make sure we never “pull a Judas” at some point down the road in our own life.


Transcription (automatically-generated):

Every baby is a little miracle, and there's just so much joy connected to bringing a new life into this world.

But there's also a lot of responsibility that's tied to it as well. One of the responsibilities that come with being a new parent is that you have to be the one that picks a name for your child.

A lot of pressure connected with that because the name that you choose is going to mark your child for the rest of their life. And so do some parents do or some. They read books on names. They create lists of possible names. They go back and forth debating which name should be and popular names. They change over time. Names that were popular 15 years ago aren't popular today. Some of them and some names that are popular today aren't going to be popular 15 years from now.

What do you want to know, what will almost certainly never change the short list of names that people will never, ever give to their children? Did any of you know any any kids by the name of Adolph growing up? Probably not, and not just because it's a German name, maybe before the 1940s, there were some cute little Adolf's running around the playgrounds in Germany and other places around the world. But after World War Two, that name dried up real fast all over the world.

Why? Because parents don't want their kids to be associated with the kind of evil that Hitler was responsible for.

It's why there's a real good chance none of you know anyone named Judas either. Nobody wants their kids to be associated in any way with White. What might be the worst act of betrayal our world has ever known. Judas is the one who betrayed Jesus to his death. Which brings us to the scene that we're looking at in our study tonight. The scene we're coming to in our study in the book of Matthew is a big one. Judas makes a decision to betray Jesus, and this decision sets in motion events that will ultimately lead to the crucifixion of Christ.

So let me read our texts found in Matthew, Chapter 26 versus 14 to 16. Here it says this, 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 saw an opportunity to betray him. This decision of Judas to betray Jesus is tied directly to the event that we saw last week where Mary poured her alabaster flask of ointment on Jesus.

Listen to how the apostle John connects these two events in John. Chapter 12, verse three to six. It says this. Mary, therefore, took a pound of expensive ointment made from piranhas and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, he who was about to betray him, said, Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?

He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and having charge of the money bag used to help himself to what was put into it. The Judas wanted Mary's ointment to be sold under the pretense of wanting to spend it on the poor. But Judas didn't care about the poor. He just wanted the ointment sold so that he could line his pockets by skimming some money off the top of the proceeds. And when Jews realize the ointment wasn't going to be sold and that he wasn't getting paid, he made up his mind that he was going to betray Jesus and make a couple bucks while he did it.

In verses, 14 of Artex, it says that Judas goes to the chief priests notice it didn't happen the other way around. Remember, the religious leaders have been plotting Jesus destruction for a couple of years now. But the chief priests, they didn't spy on the disciples and gather Intel to see who would be the most likely to hand Jesus over to them. They didn't initiate this exchange with Judas. No, Judas initiated this exchange with them. The religious leaders had Jesus fall right into their lap when Judas approached them to try to work out a deal where he would hand him over to them.

And In verses, 15, says that they agree to give Judas 30 pieces of silver for his trouble, and Matthew is the only gospel writer to record the amount that was paid to Judas.

There are a couple of reasons I think we can consider why Matthew highlights the amount in his gospel account while the other gospel writers don't include it in theirs. One reason could be that Matthew was a tax collector. His old business was all about money all day, every day. And maybe he took note of the exact amount of money because he was a tax collector. He would have been trained to do this in his old job. Tax collectors had an eye for the dollars and cents in the details there.

Now, a second possible reason, Matthew included the amount Judas received was Matthew's particular audience is always a good idea to remember that Matthew wrote his gospel with a Jewish audience primarily in mind because of this Jews who are very familiar with the Old Testament, they would have been able to connect the dots between the amount that Judas received and the other passages of scripture in the Old Testament. For example, in Genesis, there is a scene where Judah hatched a plan to sell his brother Joseph for 20 shekels of silver in Genesis Chapter 37 Verse is twenty seven to twenty eight.

We read this come and this is Judas speaking.

Let us sell him to the Ishmael and letting our hand be upon him, for he's our brother, our own flesh and his brothers listen to him. Then Midianites Schrader's passed by and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmael. AIt's for twenty shekels of silver. Something really interesting to note here, the name Judas is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Judah. In the Old Testament, we see that Judah betrays Joseph for some silver shekels and then in the New Testament, in our text, we see that Judah or Judas, as we know him, betrays Jesus or some silver shackles.

It's an interesting parallel. We can see another connection in the Old Testament, in the Book of Exodus, listen to the amount that was given for a slave who was killed. According to the Book of the Covenant Exodus, chapter twenty one, verse 32 reads like this. If the Gore is a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master 30 shekels of silver and the ox shall be stoned. So Judas sold Jesus for the price of a slave.

There's one more example from the Old Testament and the Book of Zechariah. We have a messianic prophecy that was fulfilled when Judas betrayed Jesus for the price that he did not have the time to explain the prophecy. I want to read it for you. It's an Zechariah Chapter 11 verses 12 to 13. Then I said to them, if it seems good to you, give me my wages, but if not, keep them and they wait out as my wages, 30 pieces of silver.

Then the Lord said to me, throw it to the Apart are the Lord, the price at which I was priced by them. So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw them into the House of the Lord to the potter. Matthew was a tax collector and the target audience of his gospel was the Jews, and these are a couple possible reasons to explain why Matthew was the only one to mention the exact amount that was given to Judas by the chief priests.

And then In verses, 16, says that Judas waits for an opportune time to do the deed, so he's not going to hand Jesus over publicly, but he's going to do it in secret. And Judas, of all people, knew the places that Jesus hung out with his disciples in private. He would have been able to arrange the perfect time and place to have Jesus handed over to them, which is exactly what he ended up doing. The big question I want to ask here at this point is this.

Why did Judas do it? Why did he do Jesus dirty like that? Why did he betray him? Why, after three years of walking so closely with Jesus, with Judas, make this decision? This is a huge question. It's a huge question because it's not just a question that we need to ask about Judas. Now, we can step back from our scene and ask the exact same question today about anyone who has given any amount of time in their life to follow Jesus, only to come to a point in their life where they betray him by deciding that they don't want to follow him anymore either.

Why do some people who call themselves Christians come to a place in their life where they to turn on Jesus? That's a question we can ask coming out of this text. Why did Judas do it back then? Why do people do it today? I want to clarify this question a little bit, just to be exceptionally clear, I'm not asking why followers of Jesus make mistakes. That's not the question here. I'm not I'm not talking about the daily life long fight against sin in the Christian life, the fight that we all lose from time to time.

I'm not talking about the general struggle every Christian has in their life of following Jesus, the tension that exists between yielding to the old life of the flesh or yielding to our new life. Walking in the spirit. I'm not talking about the mistakes we make that we can recover from mistakes that look like betrayal, like the one Peter committed soon after the scene where he denies even knowing Jesus.

But then later, Peter is reinstated by Jesus. Peter recovered from that mistake, but Judas didn't recover from his. We all make mistakes as we follow Jesus, but there's something different that's going on in Judas here in this scene. This is something bigger when I ask the question, why do people betray Jesus? I'm referring to the decisive moment in a person's life where they trade Jesus away for a new life, where they no longer follow him at all.

Why does a person ever make that choice? Now, whenever we ask a question like that, we're asking a searching question, this kind of question probes into a person's heart and mind when we ask this kind of why question. What we're really asking is this what was the motive behind the action? What was the inner desire that led to the decision that was made, what was going on in the person's heart to lead them to do what they did?

That's the kind of thing we mean when we ask Judas, bro, why did you agree to betray Jesus? And we need to tread cautiously when we're talking about motives, when we ask this why question, we're asking what's going on in a person's heart. And the last time I checked, we can't see directly into another person's heart.

There are a lot of instances where we can't even understand what's going on in our own hearts, let alone what's going on in another person's heart. So we can't enter into this kind of process of discerning motives flippantly. So we need to proceed with caution and we need the Bible to lay our path in our case with discerning Judas motives. The Bible helps us out big time. The word of God gives us some really, really good information that can help us to discern what may be going on in a person's heart, at the motive level.

And I think this can help us make sense of why Judas did what he did. The Bible gives us incredible insight into how we can make certain connections between a person's outward actions and their inward motives. According to Jesus, a person's actions reveal what's in a person's heart. Listen to this explanation that Jesus gives to some religious leaders connecting the outward action with the inward mode of Matthew. Chapter 15 verses 17 to 20. Read like this, Jesus says. Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth, passes into the stomach and is expelled, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person for out of the heart cum evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness slander.

These are what the file a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. Jesus is saying that the heart is what produces all these wicked things, he just listed the heart as the source. The visible action of murder comes from the invisible place of the heart. The visible action of adultery comes from the invisible place of the heart. The visible action of sexual immorality comes from the invisible place of the heart. So when we see someone doing a particular action, we can connect the action they're doing to what's going on in the heart where the desires and motives are found.

Again, it bears repeating. We do this carefully, but Jesus says that we can make this connection.

And so what outward action did Judas do, what Judas betrayed Jesus for money? Now, what does this action tell us about what Judas desired in his heart? Why did Judas betray Jesus?

Well, Judas loved money more than he loved Jesus. This explains why Jews, that Judas did what he did. Now, I want to take this idea even further, but in order for me to do so, I need to explain I need to explain a particular false gospel to you.

This false gospel is one that everybody needs to be aware of so that nobody falls prey to it and so that we can warn others to stay away from it to this false gospel probably has a much more sophisticated name than what I'm calling it. But I think after I finish, explain it to you, you'll have a harder time forgetting it. I call this false gospel, the sugar daddy gospel. I bet you didn't think you'd be hearing about Sugar Daddy is when you tuned in online for church tonight.

And just for the record. This is the rock influence of our new joint services with New Hope Church. Pastor Jeff always brings the order, the professionalism, the excellence and the class. And I supply the sugar daddy illustrations is really a perfect marriage when you think about it. And so what's the sugar daddy according to the Cambridge dictionary? Believe it or not, it's in their sugar. Daddy is a rich and usually older man who buys presents for or gives money to a younger person, especially a woman usually, so that the younger person will spend time with him and have a physical relationship with him.

Here's an example of what this looks like. Imagine an attractive twenty two year old woman and she meets a young man in his early 20s. He works a regular nine to five job five days a week and makes just enough money to make ends meet. This guy is handsome, polite, hardworking, and has the type of personality that is really compatible with hers. But she doesn't go out with them. Why not? Because instead, she chooses to date a man who's in his 70s, who she has nothing in common with and who has a net worth of 63 million dollars.

There's nothing wrong with being 70 years old, there's nothing wrong with having incompatible personalities with the person you're romantically involved with, and there's nothing wrong with being rich.

But there is something drastically wrong with entering into a romantic relationship with someone just to have access to that person's money without having any genuine desire for the person himself. This scenario I've given you is a hypothetical one, but in this hypothetical scenario, what do you think our 22 year old woman would do if her new boyfriend told her one day that he had made a string of bad investment decisions and he lost all of his 63 million dollar empire over night? What do you think she would do after hearing that news?

What can I tell you? What I think she would do? I think she would fall out of love with the man pretty quick, like almost instantaneously. Right on the spot. Why? Well, because of a woman loves a man just so she can get access to his money. She doesn't really love the man. She only loves the money. And if the money is ever gone. So was the only reason why the person would stay around because she didn't love her sugar daddy.

She only loved the sugar. He loved Jesus the way a woman loves her sugar daddy, he didn't love Jesus, he loved the sugar. And I want you to follow me here three years before the scene where in Judas leaves everything to follow Jesus, just like the other disciples did. And I think he made that choice, not fully knowing what he could expect. And along the way, Judas got to experience some awesome things. He got to spend time with Jesus.

He got to listen to him teach the crowds. He saw the countless miracles he performed. He got to see how Jesus responded to all the religious leaders, opposition of him. He got to see how he showed compassion to people in every town he entered. Judas got a front row seat to experience almost everything Jesus did throughout his three year public ministry. Judas was closely associated with the Messiah that the Jewish people had been waiting a long time for. Now the king was here and Judas was a part of the king's entourage.

I think that some point along the way, Judas, along with the other disciples, began to assume in their minds where this was all leading Jesus as the messiah we've been waiting for. He chose us to be with him.

And when he crushes the Roman occupation and establishes his kingdom in Jerusalem, then we will be able to enjoy all the benefits, all the fruits that come with being a part of the inner circle of the king. I think the image of the glory of King David and King Solomon and their kingdoms filled the disciples minds, and I think that they anticipated that they'd be able to experience a taste of that same kind of glory in their lives.

To the moment Jesus took his place on the throne, Judas could already taste the sugar on his lips. The disciples thought that their payday, so to speak, was just around the corner. But then something happened, they made their way into Jerusalem for the Passover and a realization came over Judas that wasn't going to be any sugar. Not now anyway, not in the way and in the timing that he wanted it. At Bethany, Jesus talked about pouring Ulrich's on him while he was here and then on the poor when he was gone, there was no talk about spending riches on the disciples.

And Judas realized something at Bethany. The kingdom Jesus came to proclaim is a different kind of kingdom than what Judas wanted to be a part of. Jesus didn't come this first time to give his followers the sugar of earthly riches.

He came to give them something else, something more valuable than anything. Jesus came to give them away to God. I wonder when it hit Judas, what he thought, was he angry, was he sad? Was he confused? He left everything to follow Jesus and there wasn't going to be any financial benefit in his life for doing so.

Jesus wasn't the meal ticket he thought he was going to be, and I wonder at what point during the dinner at Bethany that Judas decided to cut his losses, maybe he figured that he better find a way to get something out of this deal or the last three years of his life would have been a colossal waste of time.

But he knew how he could spin this. He knew how he could make a few bucks and cut ties with Jesus at the same time he knew the religious leaders had to do things that could make this work. They had money and they had a disdain for Jesus. And so Judas went and he agreed to give up Jesus for the thing that he wished Jesus would have given to him. Judas wanted money. Judas followed Jesus in order to get something from Jesus, Judas wanted money out of the deal, but when the money wasn't there, he no longer had any desire for Jesus.

Jesus was just a sugar daddy in Judas mind, and when the sugar was gone, so was Judas. And you want to know something?

There are people who do the same thing to Jesus today, we see this play out today when a person makes a decision to follow Jesus for the wrong reason, and when that happens, when the reason they choose to follow Jesus disappears. And their reason for continuing to follow Jesus disappears to. People still follow Jesus Day just to get the sugar. Let me give you a couple of examples. Some people follow Jesus for the sugar of a tangible spiritual experience.

Some people today are constantly searching for a spiritual high. They're hunting for a spiritual goosebumps experience, I'll call it. And sometimes a person will feel that in a church service when the congregation is all together singing songs of praise or when the word of God is being proclaimed. There are times when you really feel Jesus. And those are great moments, to be sure. But what happens if those experiences fade away? What do you do if your Christianity is built upon spiritual feelings?

Maybe you try out another church where hopefully you can get that feeling back again. But what if you can't find that feeling again in any church anywhere? Do you give up on Jesus and try to find something else to get that spiritual feeling? Some people do. Or some people follow Jesus Day for the sugar of community, a basic human desire is for community were made for it. And though Christians aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, we're generally a loving, gracious, kind, patient and hospitable community where people can experience good, healthy relationships with one another.

A person who is lonely and starving for a community could sign up to follow Jesus just because they want to fit in and enjoy relationships in the church.

But what happens when someone in the church treats you poorly one day, it is bound to happen. What do you do when the relationship you came to church for is now on the rocks? Do you go to another church to look for relationships there? What of those follow through? Do you give up following Jesus because he doesn't give you the perfect friendships that you want. Other people follow Jesus for the sugar of health and wealth, people are sold something called the prosperity gospel all the time, and not surprisingly, people sign up for it all the time.

The Prosperity Gospel says this If you follow Jesus and have enough faith in him that he will make your life financially better. You'll heal all your sickness, you'll fix all your problems. He'll give you everything this world has to offer. He'll do this if you just become a Christian. Now, the only problem with that is that you can't find those provinces anywhere in the Bible, which is a big problem. What do you think will happen if that's the reason that you decide to become a Christian?

Because you believe Jesus will make your business profitable? Well, what happens when you're a Christian and your business goes bankrupt? What happens when your family members die? What happens when you get sick?

What happens if you lose everything that you believed God was going to give you? If you sign up to follow Jesus for all the stuff you think he will give you and all that stuff goes away. Then you two have lost your reason to follow him. Forget about not naming your kids Judas. No Christian ever wants to be a Judas. Is there anything we can do in our life today that would keep us from pulling a Judas tomorrow? I'm going to wrap up this message by giving you two quick things need to do that will keep you from pulling a Judas sometime down the road, number one.

And this is the most important by far. You need to know why you follow Jesus if you're a Christian, you have to know your reason why. Again, this is the first and it's the most important thing you need to answer.

When you heard the gospel, the message of the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the call for you to trust in him alone for the forgiveness of your sins, that you choose to believe in him so that you could have a relationship with God. What did you believe so that God would make your life better? Are you a Christian primarily because you want to derive some secondary benefit from Jesus or are you a Christian because God is open up the eyes of your heart to behold the beauty of Christ and now all you want is him.

Only you can answer this question for yourself do you want Jesus rain or shine? Do you want Jesus in sickness and in health? Do you want Jesus in poverty or in riches? Do you want Jesus, even if that meant everyone in your life would abandon you because of it? Do you want Jesus in this life and in the life to come? Do you want Jesus because he's the one that you want to see in heaven when you get there?

Is he the reason you want to go to heaven in the first place so that you can see him face to face?

See, for the genuine, spiritually born again follower of Jesus, Jesus is our sugar. He's not our sugar daddy at all. And if this is the case for you, then if you ever get to the point in this life where everything's taken from you and all you have left is Jesus, then you can rest assured that you will never trade him away for silver or for anything else. Why? Because he's the only reason you signed up to follow him to begin with.

He's all that you want.

Number two. Invest in your relationship with Jesus, this is secondary to knowing your why, and it flows from it. If Jesus is your everything that invest in your relationship with them, see good marriages, they don't just happen by accident. No one just falls into them. They grow and they develop over time when two people give themselves to loving each other every day, you you love your spouse one day at a time.

Then you blink. And 40 years have passed and you look back at all the time spent in developing the relationship you have. And that's why it's good. Obviously, Jesus has time to spend with you, but the question is, do you and do I have spent time do we have time to spend with him every day? This doesn't look perfect for any Christian out there. We all bif at this at times, but know this, the people that you see in your life who have a strong relationship with Jesus didn't come upon that relationship by accident either.

They spent time building it together with him. A lifestyle of prayer, Bible study, fasting, giving and other spiritual disciplines practiced over time will produce a mature faith in Christ that could never do what Judas did. Why? Because of love that Jesus pours into our hearts and that love for Jesus that we pour back out to him. Well, you might say, yeah, but didn't Judas spend a lot of time with Jesus and look what happened to him?

Yes, Judas did spend a lot of time with Jesus, and that didn't make a difference for him. Because Jesus wasn't his sugar. For the Christian Jesus is our sugar, and that is that is the difference between us and Judas. Heads and pray, pray with me. Father, we worship you and we thank you. We thank you for the true gospel that you loved a sinful and a broken world so much as sinful and broken world that was cut off from a relationship with you that didn't have or no intimacy with you.

God, because of our sin, our sin kept us apart from you. But you loved us so much, Lord, that you developed the plan and designed the plan from before the foundation of all of the world to make a way for us to come to you.

Father, you sent your son Jesus, you came and you lived a perfect human life, and then you died on the cross where you took upon yourself the sins of the entire world, everything that we that kept us separated from you. God, you took upon yourself and you took the full punishment and wrath on the cross for our sins. You were buried and you rose conquering death and then now in you belief in you trust in you. We have a way to have our sins removed, forever removed in this life and in the life to come.

So that now the only thing that hindered us from having a relationship with you, God is now gone. Our sins are washed away. And now we can walk with you and know you and hear you and obey you and worship you and enjoy you now and forever. Thank you, God, for making a way for us to come to you. Thank you for being the greatest treasure in the universe and the greatest treasure in our hearts and our minds.

Thank you for pouring out your love upon us, Lord. Thank you for that, Lord. Bless us in our pursuit of knowing you. I pray, Lord, right now for anyone who professes to be a Christian but has signed up to follow you, Lord, not for you, but for the things that they think that you're going to give to them. Lord, lead them to repentance right now. Fill them with a fresh new anointing and a love and a powerful love that reveals to them that you are the treasure that they're longing for.

Do that in their life right now. We pray, Lord, and we pray for any friends or guests watching online who don't know you never given their lives to you. We pray collectively that what they've heard in this message would would shine on their minds and in their hearts, revealing to them, Jesus, that you are the supreme value and treasure in the universe. And by faith, by placing their faith in you, they can now have a relationship with God.

Lead them to that. We pray even now, Lord, we ask. Thank you, God, for your love for us, keep us and mature us in our faith as we continue to follow you all the days of our life in Jesus name, we pray. Amen.

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