The Tragic End of Judas Iscariot

Tragedy all around us

The Oxford definition of the word “Tragedy” is: an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.

That’s a broad definition, since it could include an event that effects one person or an entire country.

The Covid Pandemic was a tragedy.

The sinking of the Titanic was a tragedy.

The fires in California earlier this year was a tragedy.

But there are tragedies much smaller in scale, but just as heart-wrenching.

I recently read about a 16 year old boy from Barren County named Eli Heacock.

Late one night Eli got a message from someone with an inappropriate, AI generated picture of him.

The person threaten to send the photo to his friend and family if Eli didn’t give them $3000.

Within an hour of receiving the message, Eli took his own life.

That is tragic...

I debated sharing this story and opening up the topic of suicide this morning

But the reality is that, within the New Testament, this is the only incident of someone taking their own life, and it is a tragic story, as is every story of suicide we hear about in our world today.

This isn’t necessarily a message about suicide, but I do not want to avoid the subject.

I also want to bring awareness to parents in the room today of Eli’s story so that you will have conversations with our kids, especially teenagers, about the hope and forgiveness when they make mistakes or are dealing with something too big to handle themselves.

Our passage today, at it’s core, is about the effects of hopelessness.

And suicide is, perhaps, the deepest expression of hopelessness.

This message is plea to everyone of us for a Hopeful faith that, I pray, will be a cure for our struggle for hope in a tragic world.

Matthew 27:1–10 CSB

1 When daybreak came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put him to death. 2 After tying him up, they led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor. 3 Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, was full of remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. 4 “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” he said. “What’s that to us?” they said. “See to it yourself!” 5 So he threw the silver into the temple and departed. Then he went and hanged himself. 6 The chief priests took the silver and said, “It’s not permitted to put it into the temple treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 They conferred together and bought the potter’s field with it as a burial place for foreigners. 8 Therefore that field has been called “Field of Blood” to this day. 9 Then what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him whose price was set by the Israelites, 10 and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.

A Plea for Hopeful Faith

Don’t look for hope in WORLDLY PURSUITS.

We have already talked about Judas’s desire for power and the hope he had in Jesus being a conquering king who would lead him to wealth and significance.

But here we see the tragic outcome of misdirected hope.

30 pieces of silver seemed like a lot of money a few days earlier, but it didn’t fill the hole in Judas’s soul.

Those thirty pieces of silver become worthless to him. Meaningless. Nothing. And he gave up everything for it.

Judas reveals a lie we all have a tendency to fall for.

It is the lie that something on this earth can satisfy us.

If we could just find it...

It we could just buy it...

If we could just make it...

If we could just earn it through our hard work...

But...you can't earn or acquire hope.

It isn't for sale in a department store, car lot, or even on Amazon.

You can't work your way into it or find it in the most amazing job you could ever imagine having.

It's not something you can find through a relationship with a person or through your children.

Hope, real, eternal, soul-satisfying hope isn’t found in this broken world.

Judas showed us that.

But in one last attempt at hope, he turned to an unlikely place.

Don’t look for hope in RELIGIOUS LEGALISM.

After watching Jesus being led away to Pontius Pilate, Judas comes to the Religious Leaders, seeking help.

He had realized the gravity of his actions.

He had betrayed an innocent man, someone who had loved him, whom he had loved, and had trusted in...for 30 pieces of silver.

Matthew says Judas “changed his mind”. The word in Greek is “metamélomai”, meaning “to change your mind after having done something regrettable.”

A rarely used Greek word and not the word Jesus uses in Matthew 4:17 as Matthew summarized His message.

Matthew 4:17 CSB

17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

He uses the word “metanoeō” which means “a complete change of mind and direction.”

Judas was perhaps on the road to repentance, but he doesn’t get to the right destination.

He turns to the men whom, he believed, could fix his enormous mistake.

And he was right in one sense...they were the ones that could step in and stop Jesus’s trial.

They can step in, they can call for a retrial, and give Judas a chance to defend Jesus, tell everyone that he was wrong.

He wanted them to show mercy, toward him and toward Jesus.

But they weren’t going to do that. Judas has given them the one that they had wanted to get rid of for a long time. They were not turning back now.

Judas was seeking mercy and justice, but instead he got cold, empty, and rigid legalism.

Matthew 27:4 NLT

4 “I have sinned,” he declared, “for I have betrayed an innocent man.” “What do we care?” they retorted. “That’s your problem.”

Legalism tells us that sin is our responsibility is our problem to fix.

That holiness and righteousness are our responsibility to work in our own lives.

Legalism tells us to:

Do better, work harder, do more, give more...

It tells us our acceptance by God and our salvation is dependent on our performance.

When we constantly measure ourselves—or are repeatedly measured by others—by either God’s perfect law or some manmade set of religious obligations, we will constantly be defeated.

You can't save yourself.

We are just not “big” enough for that task.

“No individual human being can ever be an adequate integration point for meaningful personal identity and ultimate significance. We can never be enough—nor can we ever do enough—to satisfy our natural craving for personal worth. The cycle of human striving, followed by failure, followed by disappointment, followed by more striving, never ends—and a gnawing sense of hopelessness continually crouches at the door.” 1— Jonathan Noyes and Greg Koukl

The tragedy of Judas’s life is that he turned to the wrong place for help.

Remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30

Matthew 11:28–30 CSB

28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Find hope in CROSS-CENTERED FAITH.

Judas responds in anger and despair. He hurls the money to the floor, probably in the temple treasury room, and goes out and kills himself.

Judas's death is a tragedy because it didn't have to end like that.

As we saw a couple week ago when Jesus is arrested in the garden, and as Matthew points out at the end of our verse today, God is not surprised by any of this and it is not out of His control.

But Judas's suicide isn't the reason he is condemned to an eternity separated from God.

It is impossible to conclude from Judas’s actions that suicide automatically damns a person.

John Piper shared three Biblical truths during a funeral for a Christian who committed suicide that are so important as we consider a really hard topic.

1) Christians sometimes feel so bad that they want to die.

Some of the greatest and most faithful people of faith in history have battled depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation.

Sadness, worry, and despair are not signs of someone lacking is saving faith or has lost saving faith.

Christians can feel deep emotions that lead us to hopelessness.

2) It is sin to fulfill that desire by taking your own life.

This might be hard to hear, but please to not misunderstand or stop listening.

Suicide does violate the 6th commandment "Do not murder".

God alone is the giver and taker of life. So suicide and murder places a person above God and outside of His created order. Therefore it is sin to take a life, someone else's or one's own.

3) The only way sin can be forgiven is in our relationship to Jesus Christ by faith.

What's so amazing about God's grace is that "even while we were sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

No amount of good works can earn God’s salvation. And no amount of bad works disqualifies a person from God’s converting grace.

Piper says "Saving faith can be so weak at times that the heart gives way to grievous sin. But this does not mean that the saving relationship with Christ goes in and out of existence with each of our sins. When a believer yields to temptation, his faith in Christ is weak and the enticements of sin and the power of Satan get the upper hand. But there is a great difference between Satan getting a temporary upper hand and Satan being the Lord of life."

The final season of faith, with all its battles and failures, is not the only season of faith that will bear witness in the Last Day that we were born again." -- John Piper

Judas won't be in heaven. He won't be welcomed into the presence of God in the new heavens and new earth.

But it is not because he committed suicide.

It is because he didn't receive the glorious forgiveness Jesus accomplished on the cross.

Alongside Judas's tragic end, Matthew presents Peter, a man we've come to know.

While seemingly different, their stories are unmistakably similar.

Peter's overconfidence in his devotion was shattered by fear, leading to his threefold denial and, like Judas, was left weeping in despair because of his sin.

But unlike Judas, Peter's despair did not lead to destruction.

Instead, his story offers a powerful testament to the possibility of hope and restoration.

On Friday, Jesus would be savagely beaten and brutally nailed to a cross.

He would be cursed and mocked while He slowly and painfully suffocated to death.

And when the full weight of God's wrath fully rested upon Him, Jesus would breath His last breath.

But, on Sunday morning, the hopelessness of sin that had plagued the world from Genesis 3, that had tragically destroyed so many, including Judas.

That hopelessness was fully and finally defeated when Jesus the Messiah, Christ our Emmanuel, defeated death and rose to life.

And Peter got a front-row seat to the revealing of a new world.

The only thing that separated Peter and Judas was that Peter turned to Jesus.

The forgiveness and restoration secured by the death of Jesus on the cross is never out of reach for anyone, even the very person who gave Jesus over to be crucified.

We sing the song "How Deep the Father's Love for Us" on Sunday mornings and one of the most powerful verses is verse 2:

Behold Man upon a cross My sin upon His shoulders Ashamed I hear my mocking voice Call out among the scoffers It was MY SIN that held Him there Until it was accomplished His dying breath has brought ME LIFE I know that it is finished

It was OUR SIN that led Him to be born of a virgin and to live a life we could never live.

It was OUR SIN that led to the cross and OUR SIN that made the cross necessary.

It is OUR SIN that HELD Him there UNTIL IT (meaning the punishment for our sin) was accomplished.

My friends, there is no sin you have committed that cannot be forgiven. And there is no other place to have that sin (all our sins) forgiven than the cross of Christ.

Remember the words of that great hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand”

My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus' blood and righteousness I dare not trust the sweetest frame But wholly lean on Jesus' name

What is your hope built on?

1- https://www.str.org/w/suicide-when-hope-runs-out